• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

A New Tool Uses Data to Combat Forced Labor in the Fishing Industry

by Jennifer Marston
February 12, 2018February 14, 2018Filed under:
  • Data Insights
  • Education & Discovery
  • Industry Perspectives
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

There’s growing consumer interest in knowing where your food comes from. In some cases, it came from a corporate farm. In others, it passed through the hands of slaves on its way to the supermarket.

The latter is most often the case with fish—so much so that the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program has launched a new Seafood Slavery Risk Tool. The online database rates the likelihood of forced human labor, human trafficking, and other inhumane practices occurring on fishing vessels. Businesses that buy and sell fish can then identify any high-risk links in their supply change and, we hope, make a change when necessary.

To create the tool, The Seafood Watch Program teamed up with Liberty Asia, who aims to prevent human trafficking, and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. Using sources like investigative reports, academic publications, NGO reports, and inter-governmental publications, the database organizes evidence and explains how it factors into each fishery’s rating.

Users enter a type of fish into the database to pull up information about the fisheries catching that species: where they fish, who governs the body of water, and how high-risk that fishery is when it comes to human rights issues (see the full methodology). For example, entering “bigeye tuna” tells us that multiple organizations govern the waters where this species is caught and that this area is rated ‘Critical’ for risk of human rights abuses. It also explains why that rating applies.

Fisheries get a rating of Low Risk, Moderate Risk, High Risk, and Critical Risk. Disturbingly, Critical shows up most frequently of all the ratings, though it’s not totally surprising. Of the $34 billion of seafood products imported into the United States alone, the majority come from just a handful of countries: China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Canada, and Ecuador. Most of these countries lack the kinds of standards and regulations that make things like sustainable fishing and worker protection possible.

The tool’s launch follows the release of a long report from Human Rights Watch about the devastating conditions for workers on Thailand fishing boats. Despite substantial media attention in recent years, beatings, trafficking, child labor, and even killings of migrant workers continue, with the report noting that “in some aspects, the situation has gotten worse.”

“Human rights abuses in the seafood industry are an endemic and ongoing problem,” noted Sustainable Fisheries Partnership CEO and founder Jim Cannon. “We’re proud to be involved with the development of what we believe will be a valuable tool for the industry to help prevent these kinds of abuses from occurring.”

Changing conditions for workers in the fishing industry will take a long time, as will the laws surrounding them. At the very least, though, this new tool makes social responsibility a little bit easier for businesses—and the issues at hand more transparent for consumers.


Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify

Post navigation

Previous Post What’s in a Name (for Lab-grown Meat)?
Next Post Podcast: The Future of (Food) Media Is Conversational & AI Driven

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

The Spoon Podcast Network!

Feed your mind! Subscribe to one of our podcasts!

Tasting Cultivated Seafood in London’s East-end
After Leaving Starbucks, Mesh Gelman Swore Off The Coffee Biz. Now He Wants To Reinvent Cold Brew Coffee
Brian Canlis on Leaving an Iconic Restaurant Behind to Start Over in Nashville With Will Guidara
Food Waste Gadgets Can’t Get VC Love, But Kickstarter Backers Are All In
Report: Restaurant Tech Funding Drops to $1.3B in 2024, But AI & Automation Provide Glimmer of Hope

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.