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New Survey: Need to Improve Seafood Industry Policies on Human Rights and Engage Seafood Consumers Identified

FishWise has released an updated version of the white paper on human rights abuses.

From FishWise:

The updated version includes the results of an online survey of several stakeholder groups, including the seafood industry and seafood consumers. It also highlights recent media stories and reports on human rights abuses in seafood supply chains and lists additional groups working on human rights that could serve as resources on these issues.

Among other findings, the survey:

  • Raised questions about how much seafood companies know about human rights issues happening in their own supply chains.  Many of these companies have made a serious commitment to provide their customers with environmentally sustainable seafood products – and human rights abuses could undermine that commitment. Trafficking and forced labor, among other abuses, have been documented in several supply chains of popular seafood items in the United States. In such supply chains human rights abuses are not the only concern – often fishing interests that commit social crimes against their workers are also committing environmental crimes.
  • Showed that consumers believe that companies are responsible for ensuring human rights abuses do not happen in their seafood supply chains.  It also showed that consumers care about human rights issues. For example, the majority of seafood consumer respondents said they would be willing to pay more if a seafood product was certified to be free of human rights abuses and they would stop buying a seafood product if they knew it was associated with human rights abuses.

As media outlets increase their coverage of human rights abuses in seafood supply chains around the world, companies are going to need to take responsibility for both environmental sustainability and social aspects of their seafood supply chains.

We developed this white paper to help companies begin to address human rights within their own supply chains in an honest and transparent manner. We’re happy to connect your company with human rights experts and other resources.

The paper can also be downloaded from:

http://www.fishwise.org/services/human-rights

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