Seafood Compliance Tools
Introduction to Seafood Compliance Tools
Creating Strong Policies in Seafood Supply Chains
Creating the right policies and procedures is the foundation of an effective management systems approach to combatting trafficking in your supply chain. Putting clear expectations in contracts and other agreements is essential as the first step in changing behavior throughout your supply chain and models expectations for how suppliers interact with their own suppliers and labor recruiters.
Tool 1: Sample Code of Conduct Provisions for Seafood Supply Chains
A supply chain Code of Conduct establishes basic performance expectations for subcontractors, suppliers and agents. It is important that your company sourcing policy or Code of Conduct explicitly prohibits human trafficking and sets out protections for workers.
Tool 1A: Benchmarks of Good Practice in Recruitment and Employment in Seafood Supply Chains
Benchmarks are vital to demonstrate how anti-trafficking policies should be implemented. Clear performance indicators enable companies and others to evaluate whether genuine changes are made in the labor and recruitment practices of suppliers. The suggested benchmarks in this tools are aligned with relevant guidance from the International Labour Organization, particularly the Work in Fishing Convention (C188), which sets standards around issues such as health, safety, and medical care at sea as well as requirements for work agreements.
Tool 1B: Summary of International Social Conventions in Seafood Sector
This tool provides additional guidance to the standards and benchmarks laid out in Tools 1 and 1A, citing instruments such as the United Nations Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (UNCLOS) and the International Labour Organization's Seafarers Identity Documents Convention.
Tool 1C: Examples of Voluntary Third-Party Standards in Seafood Sector
These voluntary standards, selected from various certification programs, can also provide best practice guidance on social standards in seafood supply chains.
Tool 2: Sample Social Responsibility Agreement for Seafood Suppliers
A formal record of commitment to anti-trafficking requirements from all suppliers throughout the entire supply chain is important to establish accountability expectations for all parties.
Screening and Assessment in the Seafood Supply Chain
Screening of suppliers and assessing their performance are tools for determining robust responses to right any wrongs in business practices that are facilitating human trafficking.
Tool 3: Mapping the Seafood Supply Chain
By mapping their supply chain, seafood companies can identify their suppliers at all levels of production, including inputs of raw materials. The supply chain for each product will be unique, so supply chain mapping should be conducted on a product by product basis.
Tool 4: Risk Assessment Guidance for the Seafood Supply Chain
This tool describes how companies can undertake risk assessments at the level of country of production, port state, country of labor supply and specific supplier. It also provides suggestions for external resources that can be consulted.
Tool 5: Social Data and Product Traceability
There are several recent initiatives examining how social data might be integrated into systems that support seafood product traceability. This tool discusses the ways that produce and vessel traceability approaches can support monitoring for human trafficking risks.
Tool 6: Sample Seafood Supplier/Subcontractor Self-Assessment
An important part of a systems approach to preventing human trafficking is to assess current and prospective suppliers for potential risks, including the strengths and weaknesses of anti-trafficking systems in place.
Tool 7: Criteria for Evaluating and Screening Labor Recruiters
Tool 8: Criteria for Monitoring Labor Recruiters in Supply Chains
Tool 9: Conducting Migrant Worker Interviews and Potential Red Flags
All compliance efforts must put worker input at their core, including those related to monitoring the behavior of suppliers and labor recruiters. Careful attention is warranted in creating systems for gathering information from migrant workers through interviews and other mechanisms.
Compliance Management in Seafood Supply Chains
It’s important to have a larger vision of how to create and maintain a continual improvement system to fight trafficking in your supply chain, based on systematic, on-going risk identification, solution implementation, and performance monitoring.
Tool 10: Sample Supply Chain Assurance Program in Seafood Supply Chains
The underlying principles of a systems approach to combatting trafficking is based on a fundamental systems approach to risk management, known as ‘Identify, Evaluate, Control and Monitor.’
Tool 11: Seafood Sector Compliance Plan Template
This tool is intended for use specifically by companies that need to demonstrate compliance with the Combating Trafficking in Persons requirements of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and submit certifications under 52.222-50(h) and 22.1703(c).--
