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Article

1 Feb 2018

Author:
Clare Leschin-Hoar, National Public Radio

New database helps co's combat abuse in their seafood supply chains

The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program [...] is unveiling its first Seafood Slavery Risk Tool on Thursday. It's a database designed to help corporate seafood buyers assess the risk of forced labor, human trafficking and hazardous child labor in the seafood they purchase...

For U.S. retailers and seafood importers, ferreting slavery out of the supply chain has proved exceedingly difficult. Fishing occurs far from shore, often out of sight, while exploitation and abuse on vessels stem from very complex social and economic dynamics...

The new Seafood Watch database [...] assigns slavery risk ratings to specific fisheries and was developed in collaboration with Liberty Asia and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership...

A "critical risk" rating, for example, means credible evidence of forced labor or child labor has been found within the fishery itself...

[T]he new Seafood Slavery Risk tool will not advise retailers to purchase one species over another. Instead, "we say: stay, engage and create change in the industry by working with suppliers to change their practices" ...

All companies need to band together to work on the issue, along with the government. It really is an issue that governments are going to have to take action on." [also refers to Walmart, Kroger and Safeway]