Saving Seafood

Warmest Oceans Ever Force Tuna Titan to Start Protecting Fish

March 24, 2020 — Helping the canned tuna industry cope with climate change tops an already lengthy to-do list for Darian McBain, chief sustainability officer at the Thailand company that owns the Chicken of the Sea and John West brands.

In a business long accused by activists of abusing workers and killing dolphins, McBain’s responsibilities at Thai Union Group Pcl typically focused on improving labor rights in the supply chain and reducing the abandoned fishing gear on the high seas.

“Climate change hasn’t been the No. 1 topic,” she said. “Now, the climate emergency has to be a lot stronger part of the dialogue.”

The industry hasn’t yet confronted the magnitude of the problem, McBain said.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

GOAL 2019 keynotes to address antibiotic use, social responsibility, and more

August 15, 2019 — The Global Aquaculture Alliance’s GOAL 2019 conference, taking place in Chennai, India, from 21 to 24 October, will feature a variety of leading voices within the global aquaculture industry, including Ramanan Laxminarayan, Darian McBain, and Fabrice DeClerck.

Laxminarayan, the founder and director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy in Washington, D.C., U.S.A.; McBain, the director of corporate affairs and sustainability for the Thai Union Group; and DeClerck, the co-author of the influential EAT-Lancet Commission report “Food. Planet. Health.”, will address three major challenges currently facing aquaculture during their keynote address, GAA said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Turning up the volume on worker voice: A Thai Union case study

June 13, 2019 — Last month, Apple announced it would be phasing out its digital music marketplace iTunes – a decision that surprised Darian McBain, the global director of sustainable development for Thai Union Group, one of the world’s most prominent seafood suppliers.

Reading an article about the twilight of iTunes as she arrived in Bangkok, Thailand for the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit (SWSS19) – taking place 10 to 14 June – an analogy formed for McBain between the evolution of music portability and the evolution of worker voice in the technologies and programs trialed by Thai Union in recent years.

McBain, presenting at SWSS19, referenced Thai Union’s work with Mars Petcare, Inmarsat, Thailand’s Department of Fisheries, and others in 2016 and 2017, when the parties launched a digital traceability pilot program that involved outfitting Thai fishing vessels with One Fleet terminals to encourage real-time connectivity between land and sea. As fast as vinyl records evolved into tapes, CDs, and MP3s, so too did the scope of the pilot and Thai Union’s thought-process surrounding it, McBain recalled.

Thai Union and its partners were training workers to use “Fish Talk” chat applications developed by Xsense in response to new regulation from the Thai government, which required Thai vessel owners operating outside of national waters to provide a satellite communication system and device onboard for workers at sea. That’s when the evolution began, McBain said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Four new Seafood Champions crowned in Bangkok, Thailand at SWSS19

June 11, 2019 — The historic number of Seafood Champions grew by four on 11 June, when Diversified Communications and SeaWeb awarded Wakao Hanaoka, OceanMind, Darian McBain, and Francisco Blaha with the prestigious distinction in Bangkok, Thailand during the 2019 SeaWeb Seafood Summit this week.

The winners were chosen from a group of 17 finalists and are each regarded as seafood sustainability leaders committed to creatively and faithfully supporting the movement as it evolves, Diversified said in a press release. They were recognized during a special reception on the evening of Tuesday, 11 June at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok, where the summit is being held from 10 to 15 June.

“Once again the Seafood Champion Awards bring together a collection of inspirational stories that exemplify the great work being done to make seafood more sustainable and more ethical,” Diversified Communications Group Vice President Liz Plizga said. “We want to recognize and thank all our Seafood Champion Awards Finalists for the important work they are doing. The 17 finalists show how companies, governments, non-profits, and individuals are all having a positive impact on seafood across the globe.”

Change and progress are hallmarks of the 2019 Seafood Champion Awards recipients – the winners have been involved with changing how a country perceives sustainable seafood; transforming industry and supply chains; shifting how governments regulate fisheries and enforce the law; and redefining how individuals and communities support and benefit from sustainable fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

How to Make Sure Your Fish Wasn’t Caught by Slaves

September 8, 2016 — For years, news outlets have been reporting on the systemic use of slavery in commercial fishing in places such as New Zealand and Thailand. With much of the industry’s byproduct ending up in the United States and Europe—according to a report in The Guardian, “The U.S., U.K., and E.U. are prime buyers of this seafood—with Americans buying half of all Thailand’s seafood exports and the U.K. alone consuming nearly 7 percent of all Thailand’s prawn exports.”—there’s a strong possibility that at some point, slave-caught fish has been served on a dinner plate near you. But thanks to blockchain, a technology best known as the basis for Bitcoin, soon there will be a new digital weapon to fight slave labor.

“We want to help support fish that is caught sustainably and verify these claims down the chain to help drive the market for slavery-free fish,” Provenance founder Jessi Baker told the Guardian. Provenance is an organization dedicated to socially responsible consumerism—it recently began piloting a blockchain program with the Co-Op Food group in the United Kingdom. “This pilot shows that complex, global supply chains can be made transparent by using blockchain technology.”

Currently, the only way to track the progress of seafood through the region’s supply chain is with paper records and tagged animals. According to the Guardian, the world’s biggest tuna exporter, the Thai Union, is all for utilizing blockchain technology. “Traceability—which allows us to prove that our fish is caught legally and sustainably and that safe labor conditions are met throughout the supply chain—is vital if we are to interest consumers in the source of their tuna,” the union’s director of sustainability Dr. Darian McBain told the paper.

Read the full story at Food & Wine