Ocean’s Partners With The Seafood Task Force To Protect Fishing Workers’ Rights

We’re so proud to announce our membership in the Seafood Task Force!

Over the years, we’ve looked for opportunities to create meaningful relationships with organizations that share our values. By working together with these organizations, we have unique opportunities to do more and amplify the positive effects of initiatives that are important to us as a company. The Seafood Task Force represents a great example of a partnership that allows us to do more to combat forced labour and human rights violations in the seafood industry while addressing marine conservation issues.

What is the Seafood Task Force?

The Seafood Task Force is a diverse, influential industry-led coalition of stakeholders working together to provide oversight in the fishing industry in Thailand. The goal of the organization is to apply social and environmental standards to the seafood supply chain to combat forced labour and to protect marine environments from overfishing. To accomplish this, the task force focuses on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing (IUU), which is closely linked to social and environmental issues.

The task force is not only strategic but tactical as well, leveraging the extensive know-how of its members to tackle the following:

• Traceability – making seafood traceable from vessel to retailer and food service.
• Task force codes of conduct – to ensure social compliance and protect workers from forced labour, human trafficking, and an unsafe work environment.
• Scalability – to create models that can be replicated in countries beyond Thailand, providing a safe and healthy work environment for people and protecting marine environments globally.

Why We Joined the Seafood Task Force

Joining the Seafood Task Force was an easy decision. We have always believed that every worker across our supply chain and business deserves a work environment that is safe, healthy and offers dignity. We are also committed to protecting the ocean from overfishing and other damaging activities. Our membership in the task force gives us the opportunity to work with other like-minded organizations to create and adhere to mutual codes of conduct with all our suppliers. This helps us to ensure that every worker is treated fairly and that important environmental issues are addressed.

Being able to take action to ensure a safe and healthy work environment and to protect the ocean aligns strongly with our commitment, as a certified B Corp, to create a more sustainable and inclusive economy. As we work together with this admirable network of companies to be the change we seek in the world, we’ll continue to look for opportunities to take action towards positive change through B Corp initiatives, our own initiatives, and partnerships with other organizations, like the Seafood Task Force.