Saving Seafood

Trident, High Liner, Sysco cut ties with Chinese companies tied to North Korean labor

February 27, 2024 — Trident Seafoods, High Liner Foods, and Sysco are among the U.S. seafood firms that have suspended relationships with Chinese processors named in the latest Outlaw Ocean Project report, which revealed their use of North Korean labor, in violation of U.N. sanctions and U.S. law.

The use of North Korean laborers was prohibited in 2017 by the United Nations Security Council in response to the country testing a series of nuclear and ballistic weapons, and the U.S. has also passed a law categorizing the use of North Korean labor as forced labor unless credibly proven otherwise. Despite that, Outlaw Ocean estimates more than 120,000 metric tons (MT) of seafood have been shipped from companies using North Korean laborers to American importers since 2017.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Shrimp alliance calls for U.S. ban on forced-labor imports

January 30, 2024 — The Southern Shrimp Alliance asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security this week to add eight seafood processors in China to a list of companies blocked from importing to the U.S. because of their use of forced labor.

In a Jan. 29 letter the SSA points to evidence that red shrimp caught off Argentina  is shipped to China, and processed in plants in Shandong province where members of China’s ethnic Uyghur work under forced labor conditions.

The shrimp alliance in particular cites reporting on Uyghur labor by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit investigative journalism group founded by maritime reporter Ian Urbina.  

“The Outlaw Ocean Project recently documented that members of the Uyghur minority were forcibly moved out of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to Shandong and coerced to work in seafood processing facilities, including shrimp,” according to a statement from the SSA.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Southern Shrimp Alliance calls for ban on shrimp entering US from eight Chinese companies

January 30, 2024 — The Southern Shrimp Alliance is calling on the U.S. government to increase its scrutiny of shrimp processed and shipped to the U.S. by Chinese exporters, and a complete ban on imports from multiple companies, after recent revelations regarding alleged uses of Uyghur and forced labor by The Outlaw Ocean Project.

On 29 January, the SSA sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force calling on the department to scrutinize shrimp sourced from China’s Shandong province. The Outlaw Ocean report found extensive evidence of forced labor being employed in Shandong’s seafood processing sector.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource