The New Yorker’s Reporting on China’s Seafood Sector is a Wake-up Call
By Stephanie Madsen, Executive Director of the At-sea Processors Association
No one who has read The New Yorker’s gut-wrenching new reporting on human rights abuses in the Chinese seafood sector can think that the status quo is acceptable.
Ian Urbina’s Outlaw Ocean Project spent four years conducting brave, innovative and harrowing reporting on the inhumane treatment of workers on board some of China’s distant water fleet vessels and in several seafood processing plants in Shandong Province. The reporting team present very credible evidence that forced labor is widespread aboard some Chinese fishing vessels. They also use analysis of social media posts to confirm the presence of Uyghur laborers in Shandong Province seafood processing facilities — laborers who are victims of China’s brutal repression of Xingjiang and its “re-education” of the province’s minority populations.
These human rights abuses should be intolerable for all of us. Equally intolerable is a system that allows seafood products harvested and processed under these conditions to enter global commerce.
Wild Alaska Pollock
I represent the Bering Sea’s Alaska pollock catcher-processor fleet. Our vessels fish sustainably, exclusively in U.S. waters, operating under U.S. labor laws. All vessels are crewed overwhelmingly by U.S. citizens and green card holders. Two federally-trained independent observers are on board at all times. Vessels return to port every 10–14 days. We have voluntarily subjected our vessel operations to third-party social audits in an effort to demonstrate and extend best practices. We are proud to provide stable, family-wage jobs — with full labor and safety protections — to thousands of Americans workers.
Our vessels not only harvest Wild Alaska Pollock, they also immediately perform primary processing on board. This process utilizes the entire fish to produce a variety of products, with frozen fillets and frozen surimi the two most important for human consumption. After offload to cold storage and other facilities in Unalaska, AK, these products are transported to secondary processing facilities located in or near the markets where they are consumed.
Germany and Denmark are secondary processing hubs for frozen fillets sold in Northern Europe, while North American processing facilities are located in Anacortes and Bellingham, WA, Motley, MN, Portsmouth, NH, Gloucester, MA, and Carrollton, GA. At these facilities fillets are cut to size and often coated with sauces, breading or batter before being packaged for final sale in retail or foodservice outlets. Most of our frozen surimi is transported to processing facilities in Japan and South Korea, where it provides the main ingredient for consumer products that are popular in those markets. All of these secondary processing plants, be they in the United States, Europe, Japan or South Korea, are regulated under relevant labor laws and create critical jobs in what are often remote, rural communities.
Wild Alaska Pollock harvested by our vessels remains fully traceable throughout the supply chain, and anyone handling our product at any point can see detailed information about its origin. This includes the name of the vessel that harvested the fish, the harvest time and date, and even the exact tow. Importantly, in the United States only U.S.-harvested pollock can carry the name “Alaska” on the label. If you purchase a fish sandwich, fish sticks, or other whitefish product labeled as “Alaska” or “Alaskan” pollock, you can be certain that its entire production life cycle — from bait to plate — occurred under the most ethical conditions.
Global seafood supply chains
Few global seafood supply chains are so simple. Part of what makes The New Yorker’s reporting so important is that China is a seafood superpower. Not only does it farm and harvest huge amounts of fish every year, it is also the world’s biggest primary processing hub. For example, vast quantities of Russian-harvested fish move through China for primary processing before being exported to Europe, North America and Japan. Fish harvested in other regions, including in some U.S. fisheries, also move through Chinese processing facilities.
The full supply chains of these seafood products can be incredibly complex and opaque. Product often moves through the hands of myriad supply chain actors, sometimes becoming intermixed or anonymized over time. Assurance mechanisms that can provide greater supply chain transparency frequently fail or are non-existent. Importers and retailers too often lack visibility of whether the seafood they are buying is sustainably or ethically produced. This urgently needs to change.
Solutions
Important work has been done over the last two decades to try and improve seafood supply chain transparency, and now is the time to scale up what has been proven to work. It will take a range of approaches — from policymakers, seafood sector participants, and other stakeholders — to bring reforms to the global seafood sector.
One immediate reform APA is calling for today is the adoption of a more uniform and robust system of import controls by seafood importing nations. In 2010, the European Union implemented a new Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) Regulation, which requires a catch certificate to accompany all seafood imports. The system also empowers regulators to ban seafood imports from flag States that do not cooperate in efforts to counter IUU activity. It is past time for U.S. authorities to follow Europe’s lead and require a flag State catch certificate to accompany all seafood imports. Linking this system to NOAA’s biennial IUU report will give U.S. authorities far greater leverage to secure improvements in counter-IUU measures by our trading partners. If this innovation is coupled with closer U.S.-EU cooperation on seafood supply chain reforms and counter-IUU measures, there is an opportunity to force necessary changes in seafood supply chains covering a significant portion of global seafood consumption. Other major seafood importing nations, such as Japan, could hopefully be encouraged to follow suit.
A second step U.S. authorities should take is to ensure that the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is being fully enforced with respect to seafood. If investigative journalists have been able to identify the use of Uyghur laborers at specific seafood processing plants in China, U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities should be able to do so as well. It is already illegal for any such product to enter the United States market. We need comprehensive implementation of this landmark law with respect to seafood imports immediately.
Third, seafood consumers should be empowered rather than misled by product labeling. In Europe, consumers purchase pollock products carrying the “Alaska pollock” species name and assume that it is ethically sourced. Unfortunately, EU authorities allow this confusion to prevail, refusing to grant a Geographical Indication to Alaska for pollock harvested off its coasts. The Marine Stewardship Council eco-label also serves to anonymize seafood. It provides a generic and uniform “assurance” in the marketplace, which is now acting to disincentivize greater due diligence by retailers and consumers alike. Consumers deserve to know where their seafood comes from, and harvest origin should be displayed on seafood labels.
Finally, we call for greater authentic dialogue between the seafood industry, policymakers and civil society about lasting and workable solutions to these challenges. We know from documented abuses in other sectors that these problems are not unique to seafood. We also know that lasting and workable solutions can be challenging to implement. The truth is that some industry initiatives in this area have been too weak to make a difference; while some NGO proposals would grind legitimate and ethical seafood trade to a halt. This issue is too serious to tolerate such failures. We must all work together to implement more transparent, more ethical global seafood supply chains. APA stands ready to do its part.
