The Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish) is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) set up to improve efficiency and raise standards across the UK seafood industry. Seafish is supporting the seafood industry to help eliminate unethical practices from UK seafood supply chains. This is all about harnessing the commitment of the seafood industry to respect human rights; about assessing and understanding modern slavery risks in the supply chain; acting to deal with identified risks; looking for remedies and solutions; monitoring progress and communicating best practice. Seafish has introduced a number of integrated work areas. These include:
– Establishing the Seafood Ethics Common Language Group (SECLG) to bring industry and other stakeholders together to collaboratively understand how ethical issues can be addressed across the supply chain.
– Producing 15 profiles identifying social risks in regions supplying the UK market. These profiles were aimed at informing purchasing decisions in seafood businesses.
– Raised industry awareness of ethical issues and supporting seafood businesses to comply with UK Modern Slavery legislation.
– Developed Tools for Ethical Seafood Sourcing (TESS) to signpost stakeholders to resources to help manage and reduce risks associated with labour issues and worker welfare in seafood supply chains.
– Developed and implemented the voluntary Seafish Responsible Fishing Scheme (RFS) certifying high standards of crew welfare and responsible catching practices on fishing vessels.
– Worked with the supply chain to develop the voluntary Responsible Fishing Ports Scheme which includes worker welfare.
– Produced and disseminated briefings to improve knowledge of the issues and inform key stakeholders about the latest initiative.