Seafood is a distinct global commodity. It is the world’s last major source of wild protein and one of the largest globally traded foods by value. Because much of it comes from international waters and has many links in its supply chain, and because most of it is caught or processed by China, it is also a uniquely difficult product to track.
A recent investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a journalism nonprofit based in Washington, and published in The New Yorker uncovered a pervasive problem of labor and environmental abuses in the global seafood supply chain.
As a chef, I feel a distinct responsibility to make ethical decisions about what we eat. Over the past three decades of working in restaurants, I’ve gotten to see the personal and political power that food has in people’s lives, sustaining and bringing us together. A growing number of people in the restaurant business are working to ensure that the food we serve does not include hidden costs. But globalization has stretched the distance between makers, movers and consumers, rendering it tougher for the average person to know the history behind what’s on their plate.
Unfortunately, we now know that much of our seafood, at least what is coming from abroad and tied to China, is potentially connected to worrisome problems. The reporters who conducted the investigation boarded Chinese fishing ships. They uncovered myriad abuses, including forced labor, debt bondage, wage withholding, excessive working hours, physical abuse, passport confiscation, the denial of medical care and even deaths.
The abuses don’t end at sea. The reporters found that much of the seafood being exported to the United States and Europe from Chinese plants is processed by Uyghur and other Muslim minority workers — a highly repressed population, from the region of Xinjiang, whom the Chinese government detains in “reeducation” camps and forces to work in factories throughout the country.
For years, I’ve been pushing for sustainability on all fronts, including sourcing local, seasonal and organic ingredients wherever possible. More recently, I’m pleased to say, the public has developed more of an interest in locally caught seafood. This matters because the longer the supply chain, which is to say the farther our seafood travels to get to us, the less we are able to see into it and the more opportunities for hidden costs, such as forced or child labor, or the climate impacts involved in shipping seafood halfway around the world.
Chefs, restaurants, grocery stores and average consumers must insist whenever possible that the seafood they buy is locally caught and processed. Sustainability and human rights advocates have recommended that companies exercise due diligence investigations of their supply chains all the way from bait to plate, including by directly engaging the workers who catch and process the fish. Advocates have also called on grocers and restaurants to demand more information from plants about potential commingling of products from different vessels and to cross-check the names of their suppliers against governments’ lists of bad actors.
The U.S. government needs to take action by strengthening the seafood import monitoring program, increasing corporate reporting requirements and taking steps to enforce already existing U.S. laws enabling customs officials to block imports from certain regions or industries.
Time will tell if any of these tactics work. But in the meantime, the rest of us can keep trying to choose local and to ask tough questions before we buy seafood.
Kerry Heffernan is chef at Grand Banks in New York.
