Oct. 27, 2026

What the Sustainable Seafood Label Can’t See

You did the responsible thing. You looked for the certification, the guide rating, the green check mark, and you bought the fish that carried it. Investigators with The Outlaw Ocean Project have now checked the supply chains behind more than 559 seafood companies making sustainability claims as strong as yours. More than half had a documented crime or concern somewhere upstream.

That finding closes our four-part series on fish feed. We followed what farmed fish eat, how fishmeal pulls food away from coastal communities in West Africa, and how the boats that catch feed fish operate. Today is about the label on the package: what it covers, where it stops, and what you can do about the gap.

I have recommended seafood labels and guides for years, and I still do. I want you using them with your eyes open.

The numbers behind the claims

Many companies in the investigation may not have known about problems in their supply chains. Some were hidden from them. The scale is still striking. Of the fishmeal plants and supplier fishing vessels the investigators examined, at least 80 held MarinTrust certification, and virtually all were linked to crimes or concerns. Since 2020, at least nine false advertising lawsuits have been filed against six US seafood companies over sustainability and ethics claims, with more than $2 million paid in settlements. You can read the full findings here.

Where audits look

A farmed fish travels a long road to your plate: the fishing boat, the fishmeal plant, the feed mill, the fish farm, the processor, the importer, the store, and finally you. Most certification audits focus on the farm, sometimes the processor. Spot checks are often announced in advance, which removes the surprise.

Auditors also rarely interview crews at sea in their own language with the captain out of earshot. That condition matters. A worker held against their will, without a passport or contact with family, will say nothing with a captain standing nearby.

Case one: Western Sahara to UK sea bass

Western Sahara is a territory on Africa’s Atlantic coast. Morocco has occupied most of it since the 1970s, and European courts have ruled repeatedly that it is legally separate from Morocco and that trade deals with Morocco do not cover it without the consent of the Sahrawi people.

As of 2025, 14 fishmeal plants were operating in Western Sahara, eight of them in the port city of Laâyoune. According to The Outlaw Ocean Project, their exports are often labeled as Moroccan before they ship. One Laâyoune plant, Delta Ocean, supplies fishmeal to Kılıç Deniz, a Turkish company that makes fish feed and runs sea bass farms. Kılıç Deniz has held Aquaculture Stewardship Council certification since 2019, and its farms supply major UK grocers including Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, according to a 2025 report by DeSmog.

When asked, Sainsbury’s said its supplier had received written assurances from Kılıç Deniz that the feed used for Sainsbury’s sea bass did not come from the companies investigators named. Waitrose, Tesco, Kılıç Deniz and Delta Ocean did not respond to requests for comment. Read the full Western Sahara report.

The farm can meet the standard while the feed’s origins rest on paperwork. That is the gap.

It shows up across the system. Seafood Watch states openly that its ratings cover environmental impact and that labour risk is assessed in a separate tool built for businesses. MarinTrust describes itself as a standard setter grounded in science, and a 2024 DeSmog investigation found its governance fully controlled by members of IFFO, the fishmeal industry’s own trade association.

Case two: Gunjur to Canadian freezers

Gunjur, in The Gambia, is home to the Bolong Fenyo lagoon, which turned red in May 2017 and again in May 2025. The fishmeal plant beside it is called Golden Lead. According to trade records compiled by The Outlaw Ocean Project, Golden Lead sent at least 10 shipments of fishmeal between 2022 and 2023 to Grobest, an ASC-certified shrimp feed mill in Vietnam. Grobest sells feed to hatcheries and farms supplying major exporters, including Minh Phu, which has shipped shrimp to Canadian importers whose brands sit in the freezer aisles at Sobeys and Walmart Canada. None of those companies responded to the investigators’ questions. Read the full Gambia report.

The records show a link between companies. They do not prove that any particular bag of shrimp contains fishmeal from Golden Lead, and nothing suggests the grocers knew. That is exactly the point: nobody in the chain had asked to look all the way back. The chain is now public in the Bait to Plate tool, so anyone can ask.

What happens when buyers can see

In October 2023, a multi-year investigation by The New Yorker and The Outlaw Ocean Project documented Uyghur workers moved from western China into seafood processing plants on China’s east coast under a government labour transfer program. Seafood from some of those plants reached buyers in North America and Europe, and the investigators published the trade records.

Within a day, High Liner Foods, one of Canada’s largest seafood companies, announced it had cut ties with the named suppliers. Albertsons had already pulled affected products. Lund’s Fisheries in New Jersey cut ties too. The following year, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council closed its office in China.

Once buyers could see the chain, they acted fast. Visibility changes behaviour.

Your one-email action

Find your grocery chain’s annual forced labour supply chain report. In Canada, search the chain’s name plus “S-211 report,” or browse the Public Safety Canada catalogue; large companies must file one every year by May 31. In the UK, look for the company’s modern slavery statement on its website or in the government registry. Check whether the report mentions seafood, and especially seafood feed. If it doesn’t, send the company one line asking why. In the US, ask customer service whether the store’s seafood sourcing policy covers fish feed.

Picture a compliance manager at head office reading that email. Then a second one. Then a hundred. Next year’s report gains a new paragraph. In 2023, it took companies one day to act once they could see. Help them see.

Takeaways

Certification audits mostly cover the farm and sometimes the processor, leaving fishmeal sources largely unexamined
Fishmeal from Western Sahara and from a polluting plant in The Gambia has been linked to certified feed mills and farms supplying major retailers
Seafood Watch ratings address environmental impact; labour risk is handled in a separate business tool
Public trade records led seafood companies to cut ties with suppliers within a day in 2023
Canada and the UK require large companies to publish forced labour reporting you can read
Asking your grocer whether its seafood policy covers fish feed takes one email

Thanks to Maya Martin, Senior Research Editor at The Outlaw Ocean Project, for joining us earlier this week. Explore the full Food for Feed investigation and the Bait to Plate tool.

Sources:

Andrew Lewin

CEO

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