Seafish wants to complete a detailed review of ethical issues impacting on seafood species landed into, and imported to the UK, and ultimately sold to UK consumers. This will cover all country suppliers to the UK seafood market, as well as domestic landings; wild caught and farmed species; different sectors of the supply chain; and all aspects of unethical practice.
Michaela Archer, Head of Information explains: “Human ethics is a complex global issue affecting many countries and a wide range of products. For the purposes of this project we use the term ethics for issues relating to labour and human rights. This includes slavery, bonded and forced labour, child labour and health and safety across the whole supply chain, be that on land or at sea.
“The concept of ethical and responsible procurement is not new, but there are growing concerns regarding unethical practices within the global seafood market, with several cases of human rights abuses highlighted in the media. The impacts of these unethical practices are wide reaching.
“The UK seafood industry is already working on this issue on a number of levels and is keen to move forward towards eliminating unethical practices from UK supply chains. As a starting point we require indepth insight into the issues across the whole supply chain.
“This is a significant project to produce a detailed, fully referenced report covering ethical issues and risks associated with seafood supplied to the UK market. The intention is that this will cover mapping the issues, by country and species and, if data is available, by fishery. We also want to horizon scan for emerging and future issues,” said Michaela.
The final report will be presented to the Seafood Ethics Common Language Group. This group was formed by Seafish in July 2014 to facilitate information and knowledge exchange across a whole range of stakeholders, establish a common understanding of the issues, communicate the work currently going on to address them and agree a clear agenda for future action.
Seafish is looking for applicants to undertake this project, ideally with expertise in work of this nature and a track record in delivering projects to a high standard.
The deadline for submitting tenders is 5pm on 23 January 2015. The majority of the work is expected to be completed by July 2015.
For more information see the Seafish website: http://www.seafish.org/media/1337203/td2014-005_seafishethicstenderdocument.pdf
