Seafood Fisheries and Aquaculture Certification, Standards and Ratings Review Project

"This report makes clear that consumers cannot be expected to carry the weight of ensuring their purchasing decisions are not tainted by human rights abuses."

Joanna Ewart-James, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Freedom United

Respondents Updates

14 February 2023: ASC has engaged with HRAS and disputed several findings. These points are under review by the HRAS research team working with ASC.
7 March 2023: FISH Standard for Crew (FISH) respond to HRAS requesting review of findings.[Onoing engagement].
15 March 2023: Naturland e.V. respond to HRAS disputing findings. [Ongoing engagement].
28 March 2023: FISH Standard for Crew (FISH) submit HRAS Questionnaire response. [Ongoing engagement].
14 April 2023: ASC responds to HRAS Questionnaire 1.0.
21 April 2023: ASC publicly responds to Certifications review.
15 June 2023: Fish Standard for Crew (FISH) respond to HRAS Questionnaire 1.0.
5 July 2023: Monterey Bay Aqaurium (USA) responds to HRAS Certifcations Review.
6 July 2023: MarinTrust responds to HRAS Questionnaire 1.0.
17 July 2023: Global Seafood Alliance (GSA) responds to HRAS Certifications Review.
19 July 2023: Global GAP responds to HRAS Certifciations Review.
20 July 2023: Friend of the Sea responds to HRAS Questionnaire 1.0.
25 July 2023: Seafish (UK) responds to HRAS Certifications Review.
8 August 2023: Fair Trade USA responds HRAS Certifications Review.
11 August 2023: FIA PNG respond to HRAS Questionnaire 1.0.

Public Right of Reply Responses

All identified entities have a public right of reply to the HRAS research and reporting. All genuine submissions will be published, subject to editorial review and mutual agreement from sources. UK and European Data Protection laws apply.

Objectives

There are six initial objectives.

Commence a wide-ranging international review on the identified seafood certifications, standards and ratings entities set against subjective key performance indicators (KPIs) linked to Human Rights at Sea’s vision to end human rights abuse at sea.
Continuously review and update all pertinent and related public data and provide bi-annual performance updates against listed KPIs for third-party review and use.
Encourage wider seafood sector debate, engagement and commitment to rapid improvement in protections for supply chain worker’s fundamental human and labour rights howsoever achieved.
Ensure objective and balanced public awareness of seafood providence being sourced by retailers and bought by consumers.
Provide a transparent, accountable and a clear source of trusted data with associated recommendations.
Build consensus and directly affect expedited change.

HRAS Seafood Fisheries Aquaculture Human Rights Standards front cover

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Foreword

As consumers we’re led to believe we hold the power to ensure the goods we buy are not harmful to humans and the planet. In classic economics, companies simply supply what the market demands. We are ‘the market’ and it is the market that sets the price. And we are increasingly aware, in this information age, that price goes far beyond the ticket on the shelf. It’s not just what’s in the tin, but how it got there – the husbandry, the working conditions, the production process. The outcome? A plethora of labels of various certification schemes aimed at meeting that demand. But do these labels really address the true cost and help empower consumers to leverage their purchases to get what they want?

This much-needed data-driven examination of labels – certification standards – within the fisheries industry shows that all is not what it might seem. It demonstrates the complexity of a solution based on voluntary standards, beginning with the plethora of schemes, each with its own criteria, inconsistent both in mandate, assessment process and enforcement. The existence of such a report, on just one industry, indicates just how unrealistic it is as a means for consumers to understand the true cost of a product and exercise our purchasing power accordingly.

Certification stamps do little to empower consumers to leverage their purchase influence, particularly if their concerns are forced labour. For consumers willing to be proactive to avoid complicity in exploitation, this report shows that the knowledge, time, and analysis needed to assess the meaning of labels on products in an average grocery store basket, from fish to flowers, cotton products to cocoa. The weight of the task at hand undermines any good intentions claimed by such schemes.

This report makes clear that consumers cannot be expected to carry the weight of ensuring their purchasing decisions are not tainted by human rights abuses. It underpins the frustration with voluntary principles and the growing calls for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation across the economy, to set a true baseline of what we agree are international minimum standards, that are then built upon for a future world economy that puts people and the planet above profit.

Joanna Ewart-James

Co-Founder and Executive Director, Freedom United

Glossary

ESG

Environment, Social and Governance considerations that are used to evaluate sustainability performance.

Grievance Mechanism

Confidential complaints process that can be used by affected stakeholders such as individuals, employees, civil society and communities to obtain a resolution.

International Bill of Human Rights

Refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Maritime Labour Convention (MLC)

ILO Convention adopted in 2006 covering seafarers’ rights at work. The MLC was adopted in conjunction with the IMO and entered into force in 2013.

Remediation

Process of stopping, reversing and redressing adverse human rights impacts and providing guarantees of non-repetition.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth while tackling climate change and working to preserve the oceans and forests.

UN Guiding Principles on
Business and Human Rights

Non-binding guidelines for States and companies to prevent, Business and Human Rights address and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations.

Abbreviations

AKRFM - Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management

ASC - Aquaculture Stewardship Council

BAP - Best Aquaculture Practices

BIM - Bord Iascaigh Mhara

CGF - Consumer Goods Forum

CQA - Certified Quality Aquaculture

ESG - Environmental, Social, Governance

FIA - Fishing Industry Association

FISH - Fairness, Integrity, Safety & Health

FOS - Friends of the Sea

G.A.P. - Good Agricultural Practices

GSA - Global Seafood Assurances

GULF - Gulf United for Lasting Fisheries

HRAS - Human Rights at Sea

HRDD - Human Rights Due Diligence

ILO - International Labour Organization

MEL - Marine Eco-Label (Japan)

MLC - Maritime Labour Convention

MSC - Marine Stewardship Council

OPAGAC - Organización Productores Asociados Grandes Atuneros Congeladores

RFM - Responsible Fisheries Management

SDG - Sustainable Development Goals

SSCI - Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative

UNGP - UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

Introduction: Avoiding Protecting Persons at Sea

To date, sustainability efforts in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors have largely been focused on the environmental consequences of wild capture and fish farm production, with an increasing focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the applicable UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in addition to established international standards and legal instruments.

The economic focus of corporate fisheries and aquaculture appears to assume that sustainability is synonymous with profit and de facto, market dominance. Meanwhile, fundamental worker rights’ protections within fisheries and aquaculture operations have largely been neglected and often appear within voluntary sustainability programs as an afterthought bolted on to environmental credentials.

Across the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, the often-blatant disregard of assured protections for fundamental worker’s rights through voluntary certifications, standards and rating schemes that aim to measure the environmental and sometimes the chain of custody performance of commercial operations remains prevalent.

This situation is not acceptable.

What seems like a persistent reluctance to comprehensively address the social aspects of fisheries and aquaculture means that human and labour rights protections are regularly excluded from voluntary evaluations and audits of performance for most at-sea operations. Only now, in 2023, and at the time of writing, are we starting to see an increased interest and uptake in the human and labour rights aspects of the ‘S’ in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).

As the founding principle of Human Rights at Sea (HRAS) has stated since April 2014, “Human rights apply at sea, as they do on land”. This framing and positioning is key for true impact and better victim remediation within voluntary certifications, standards and rating schemes, as well as accurate ESG reporting if the current evaluation programs are to accurately account for the environmental, economic and social aspects of operations at sea.

Let us be clear. Human and labour rights protections are not limited just to land-based operations.

Today, with real-time data, intelligence gathering and analytic methods increasing, improvements in worker voice and union representation alongside widespread public reporting, there is now significantly more demand by consumers for transparency surrounding the provenance of products and the real working conditions used to source and produce them. This includes at sea.

For the global seafood industry across fisheries and aquaculture sectors, this means continuously pressing the necessity for accessible and embedded supply chain transparency and accountability from vessel or farm through to plate. It is everyone’s responsibility to implement.

But this call to action is not new, and that is the exasperating aspect of this kind of advocacy. Consequently, there remains the need for continuous and ongoing sector reviews.

To sum up, the current seafood certification, standards, ratings and ESG ecosystem is saturated in entities vying for market position while their operations are often opaque and hidden behind corporate veils. For this reason, with the external support of MarFishEco and peer reviews, HRAS has spent 36 months examining this landscape to produce an open-source fisheries and aquaculture independent Ecosystem 1.0 review addressing the worker’s rights and social components that are lacking. Subject to funding, HRAS intends to continue delivering such independent reviews and associated reporting, first, to provide a baseline for public access to available data and, second, to catalyse individual and collective actions for demonstrable change.

David Hammond

CEO, Human Rights at Sea
8th February 2023

"For the global seafood industry across fisheries and aquaculture sectors, this means continuously pressing the necessity for accessible and embedded supply chain transparency and accountability from vessel or farm through to plate. It is everyone’s responsibility to implement."

David Hammond CEO, Human Rights at Sea

This Independent Review

An Independent insight into the scale of human rights protections within voluntary fisheries and aquaculture certifications, standards and ratings.

At the time of writing, this independent, transparent report provides a detailed review of all pertinent voluntary certifications, standards, and ratings for what is being publicly stated by the identified entities across their online platforms and in the media. It is framed as the ‘Ecosystem 1.0’ version and will be updated as an iterative publication. All current and updated data sets will be held on the HRAS website, www.humanrightsatsea.org.

Please note that the data contained within this review will be secured on the HRAS website and made available from 1st March 2023 at: www.humanrightsatsea.org/csrreview All updates and/or relevant comments related to this review should be emailed to HRAS at: enquiries@humanrightsatsea.org (“FAO Certification Review”).

Methodology

An ecosystem review of online grey literature, open-source website, public media content and discussions with key informant experts was undertaken over 36 months to uncover all viable certifications, standards and ratings systems within the fisheries and aquaculture sectors. HRAS has provided a comprehensive suite of 16 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that, if included in a certification, standard or ratings program, could be considered inclusive of the necessary human and labour rights dimensions and fundamental protections for fishery and aquaculture operations. These HRAS KPIs represent an iterative starting point and, arguably, a robust holistic ‘ground-zero’ that correctly considers human and labour rights standards, protection measures, as well as established policy standards such as the ILO Forced Labour indicators and relevant international law instruments. Each certification, standard and rating identified in the review was benchmarked against the 16 subjective HRAS KPIs as a baseline of best practice. Where a certification, standard or rating did include, acknowledge, or correctly consider a single HRAS KPI, a score of one was given. The HRAS KPIs were compared across every certification, standard and rating. The highest score attainable was a 16 (a program that covers all HRAS KPIs), and the lowest score attainable was a zero (a program that does not consider any of the HRAS KPIs).

Baseline Key Performance Indicators 1.1

Table 1: HRAS KPIs used to benchmark the fisheries and aquaculture certification, standards and rating ecosystems. These are subjective to HRAS.

Fisheries Certification, Standards and Ratings Ecosystem 1.1

Fisheries Certification, Standards and Ratings Bar Graph 1.1

Figure 2: Bar graph showing the benchmarking scores for all the fishery certifications, standards and ratings uncovered in the ecosystem review.

Explanation: The size of the bar represents the benchmarking score. Bars are ordered from best performer to worst performer.

Fisheries Results 1.1

The KPIs that were most commonly not addressed in fishery certification, standards and rating programs were related to transparency and remediation.

These were:

There is no disclosure regarding where on the audit / review pathway to certification a client is and at what stage of the process client remediation pathways are actioned.
There is no public disclosure of how a standard has or has not been met.
There are no publicly available policies for supporting victims of abuse.

Aquaculture Certification, Standards and Ratings Ecosystem 1.1

Aquaculture_Ecosystem_Scoring_v1.1-min.jpg

Aquaculture Certification, Standards and Ratings Bar Graph 1.1

Figure 4: Bar graph showing the benchmarking scores for all the aquaculture certifications, standard and ratings uncovered in the ecosystem review.

Explanation: The size of the bar represents the benchmarking score. Bars are ordered from best performer to worst performer.

Aquaculture Results 1.1

The KPIs that were most commonly not addressed in aquaculture certification, standards and rating programs were related to transparency and remediation.

These were:

There is no disclosure regarding where on the audit / review pathway to certification a client is and at what stage of the process client remediation pathways are actioned.
There is no public disclosure of how a standard has or has not been met.
There are no publicly available policies for supporting victims of abuse.

So What?

The Failings

The benchmarking of the HRAS KPIs against the existing Ecosystem 1.0 review of fisheries and aquaculture certification, standards and rating programs clearly shows that there is not enough consideration for the human rights-associated aspects of these operations.
Some fisheries and aquaculture certifications, standards and rating programs do consider a selection of the HRAS KPIs, but still, an overwhelming majority do not even consider one of the 16 potential HRAS KPIs.
Without due consideration of human rights protection and assessments within fisheries and aquaculture certification, standards and rating programs, it will not be possible for retailers or consumers to source and buy produce in the knowledge that their purchasing decisions are not tainted by human rights abuses.
The results of this fisheries and aquaculture certification, standards and rating Ecosystem 1.0 review highlight a historic focus and sustainability narrative that centres around environmental sustainability and neglects the human component of fisheries and aquaculture supply chains.

The Solutions

With improved data capture, technology, communication and implementing policy and legal standards that are accountable and enforced, there is no excuse for such shortfalls in human rights considerations, protections and implementations throughout the fisheries and aquaculture supply chain.

Conclusion

This Human Rights at Sea (HRAS) report is the NGO’s first comprehensive collation review of fishery and aquaculture certifications, standards and rating programs and subsequent evaluation of their due consideration of human rights considerations, protections and implementations.

Whilst some of the fishery and aquaculture certifications, standards and rating programs do consider and address some of the KPIs that HRAS have subjectively highlighted as being essential for inclusion, there remain major gaps that must be filled to be confident that human rights are being considered properly and transparently within these programs, and throughout the associated supply chains.

The Ecosystem 1.0 review shows compelling evidence that, collectively, there is not enough being done to incorporate human rights considerations into certifications, standards and ratings in fishery and aquaculture supply chains.

This is likely driven by five background issues:

A historic tendency to focus on public reporting of environmental sustainability and impact over the human welfare of people working in fishery and aquaculture supply chains.
A virtual lack of data related to suspected or identified human rights abuses when compared to the extensive public reporting surrounding environmental sustainability impacts of fishery and aquaculture operations.
Unwillingness to embrace the additional complexity of incorporating another audit consideration into certifications, standards and rating programs.
A core concern that exposing abuses within the supply chain will directly affect commercial reputation, market position and, therefore, profit.
A general apprehensiveness that the empowerment of workers will lead to potential litigation against employers for abusive behaviours, poor working standards, and increased unionisation.

Moving forward there must be a collective, transparent effort in improving the consideration of human rights in seafood supply chains to both protect those working in them and to give confidence to retail and consumers that purchasing decisions are not promoting potentially unlawful and abusive practices.

Human rights abuses in seafood supply chains are no longer out of sight, nor out of mind. It is, therefore, time to come together, act as a collective and address the current gaps in fishery and aquaculture certifications, standards and rating programs for the betterment of the millions working in seafood supply chains.

All the identified programs have significant room for improvement on the issues raised.

Recommendations

There are three recommendations from this Ecosystem 1.0 review of fisheries and aquaculture certifications, standards and ratings.
All certifications, standards and ratings programs should note the contents of the HRAS review and publicly act upon the issues raised. All certifications, standards and ratings must be accountable for their inclusion, reporting, tracking and support to victim remediation for all incidents of worker rights abuse about which they are put on notice; however, that notice is given.
Bi-annual updates of these ecosystem reviews are required and must be funded for public awareness of individual program improvements.

Funding

The Review report has been funded by charitable funds sourced from HRAS. Annual accounts are available to review via the UK Charity Commission website. Annual organisation reports are also available to download via the Charity’s website. www.humanrightsatsea.org

Conflict of Interest

There are no known conflicts of interest declared in the preparation, drafting or publishing of this Review.

Disclaimer

The content of this Review has been published by Human Rights at sea (HRAS) following public desk-top research, international maritime legal reviews, and consultancy support. The contents have been checked as best as possible for accuracy at the time of writing. HRAS is not liable in any way whatsoever in any jurisdiction for the contents of this Review, which has been published in good faith in support of the Charity’s Objectives. All text and pictures have been acknowledged, where able. Any stated opinions, perspectives and comments are solely those of the authors quoted. Any omissions or factual inaccuracies should be immediately alerted to HRAS by writing to: enquiries@humanrightsatsea.org ISBN: 978-1-913252-53-3

v1.1 Data Downloads [6 March 2023]

Aquaculture_Certfication_Standards_MAIN_LIST_1.1-(Read-Only)

Fisheries_&_Aquaculture_Certifications_Standards_Combined_Binary_Matrix_1.1-(Read-Only)

Fisheries_&_Aquaculture_Certifications_Standards_Evidence_Matrix_1.1-(Read-Only)

Maritime_Certifications_Benchmarking_Matrix_1.1-(Read-Only)

Fisheries_Certifications_Standards_1.1-(Read-Only)

HRAS Benchmarking Methodology_1.1-(Read-Only)

Maritime_Human_Rights_Conventions_Frameworks_1.1-(Read-Only)