June 25, 2018 — Hari Pulapaka, chef and owner of the restaurant Cress in Deland, Florida, prides himself on his ability to tell diners the names of the captain and vessel that brought them the seafood on their plate. For the past few years, he has done this with the help of Sea to Table, a flourishing family-owned business beloved in the sustainable food movement for connecting chefs like him to independent, American fisherman.
So when Pulapaka, a member of the Grist 50, recently saw a link in an online forum for like-minded chefs to a recent Associated Press investigation into labor abuses connected to Sea to Table’s suppliers, his response was three words: “Well that sucks.”
“It’s slightly deflating, because then you have to ask yourself who do you trust? How do you go about trusting?” Pulapaka said.
Chefs across the country who care about the sustainability of the seafood they serve are in a bind. It takes diligence to trace where your seafood comes from, and many chefs had relied on Sea to Table — one of the largest distributors of earth-friendly seafood. Last week, the company came under scrutiny when an AP investigation revealed that products it marketed as locally sourced were actually caught as far away as Indonesia by suppliers with a history of labor abuses. One fisherman on a boat that sent fish to a Sea to Table supplier said workers were “treated like slaves,” working without enough food or water while earning $1.50 for a 22-hour day.
“The unimaginable working conditions and horrific treatment of marine life in the international seafood industry must be addressed,” Sea to Table said in a statement released after the investigation was published. “We would have never accepted overseas product fished in this manner.”