Marine
Stewardship Council, Greenpeace and Marine Conservation Society say retailers
must be called to account
The Guardian, Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent, 11 June
2014
Environmental campaigners and human rights groups have said the revelations of slavery in the prawn supply chain are a wake-up call for consumers. They are urging shoppers to boycott cheap Thai prawns and other imported seafood if supermarkets can not guarantee the goods have been sourced ethically.
The Marine Conservation Society warns that current labelling may not help consumers identify sustainable and ethical sources of seafood. Photograph: CHT |
Environmental campaigners and human rights groups have said the revelations of slavery in the prawn supply chain are a wake-up call for consumers. They are urging shoppers to boycott cheap Thai prawns and other imported seafood if supermarkets can not guarantee the goods have been sourced ethically.
The Marine
Stewardship Council, which backs a labelling scheme to help shoppers buy fish
ethically, said the other option was to buy cold-water prawns fished from the
north Atlantic – which accounts for about a third of all prawns eaten in the UK
– or Dublin Bay prawns from the Irish Sea.
An MSC
spokesman said: "This is undoubtedly an extremely serious and important
issue. We condemn the practices described in the Guardian investigation."
The Marine
Conservation Society which advises consumers on fish to eat and fish to avoid
on ethical grounds, urged consumers to try to find out, before buying, whether
supermarkets were engaged with improvement projects in Thailand or the rest of
south-east Asia. It said, however, that labelling was limited in its scope and
might not help.
Willie
Mackenzie, Greenpeace's oceans campaigner, said: "Cheap seafood trashes
oceans and ruins lives. The Guardian's investigation exposing slavery in the
seafood industry should be a worldwide wake-up call to retailers and consumers.
"Forced
labour and human rights abuses are not just issues in tropical prawn farming,
they are unseen factors in other fishing too. UK retailers are in many ways the
best in the world on sourcing seafood responsibly, but there is clearly a lot
more to do."
The
six-month Guardian investigation established a trail between prawn products
sold by US, British and European retailers and violent slave labour. The
investigation found that the world's largest prawn farmer, the Thailand-based
Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, buys fishmeal, which it feeds to its farmed
prawns, from some suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned
by slaves.
Supermarkets
which have sourced cheap Thai "king" prawns supplied by CP Foods
include the world's top four retailers – Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco –
along with big UK supermarket chains Morrisons, the Co-op, Aldi UK, and
Iceland.
Retailers
refrained on Wednesday from adding to their earlier statements condemning slavery and human trafficking.
A
spokeswoman for the charity Compassion in World Farming said: "Consumers
should take the advice of the Environmental Justice Foundation; ask retailers
about their supply chain, and when buying fish look for the Marine Stewardship
Council logo to ensure wild-caught fish is sustainable.
"Consumers
should also be aware that there are no animal welfare standards for prawns,
while there are also questions of the long-term sustainabiliy of feeding fish
meal to prawns, which takes away from the global food basket, rather than
adding to it."
Owen
Espley, economic justice campaigner at the anti-poverty charity War on Want,
said: "This investigation shows how UK retailers are profiting from
appalling labour rights violations within their supply chains. British [firms]
need to come clean about their sourcing and ensure action is taken to protect
all workers from such abuses. The time is long overdue for British ministers to
step in where retailers' voluntary initiatives have failed and ensure that all
companies take action to address the exploitation throughout their supply
chains."
The chef
and Guardian writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who investigated Thai prawns
for his Fish Fight series for Channel 4, said that CP Foods and UK retailers
had "to use their buying power and political influence to clean up
Thailand's fisheries, and fast".
Related Article:
Related Article:
No comments:
Post a Comment