What the Sustainable Seafood Label Can't See

0:00 You bought the fish with the green check mark. Now, investigators check the supply chains behind hundreds of seafood companies making the claims like that, like that they are being sustainable. That's what they wanna hear. More than half had a documented problem somewhere upstream. That's the problem. That's the problem that we're seeing, Now, we've talked about three days following the feed, we've talked about what the farm fish are eating. We're talking about how the fish meal is taking away fish from specific coastal areas like, in countries in West Africa. And yesterday we talked about, how that fish is being moved around, how all the boats and all the things that go on on the boats, how it's actually being caught.

0:40 Now, today we're gonna focus on the label on the package and what you can do to make sure that you are eating sustainable seafood. I think that's, like, the biggest thing right now when you buy certified seafood, Cause you did the responsible thing, You used the tools that you had, and you wanna say, like, clearly, " I wanna make sure that this is sustainable." But the question today is what those labels cover and where they stop. Not that they mean to not cover certain things, but there are certain things that we are discovering each and every day where we're like, "Oh, yeah, that doesn't actually work right now because of whatever we've discovered this week on 'The Outlaw Ocean Project.'" Now, I've recommended seafood labels and guides for years, and I still do, I wanna make sure you're using them with your eyes open, though, and that's what today's all about, and so I want you guys to kind of understand that.

1:29 Now, investigators have looked at more than 559 seafood companies making strong sustainability claims. More than half had a documented crime or concern somewhere in their supply chains. Now, they may not have known about it. It may have been hidden from them, but now with this Outlaw Ocean Project investigation that's coming to light, we now know where the problems are. At least 80 fish meal plants and boats they investigated held Marine Trust certification. So it's, like, a specific certification that is supposed to be, like, sustainability. Virtually all of them had crimes or concerns linked to their supply chains. Now, since 2020, at least nine US false advertising lawsuits have targeted seafood sustainability companies with more than $2 million in settlements.

2:15 Now let's look at what this supply chain looks like. You go from the boat, the fish meal plant, the feed mill, fish farm, processor, importer, and then the store, and then you. Most of the audits in these programs focus on the farm, sometimes the processor, but spot checks are often announced ahead of time, so it's not really a spot check, and it's not really, like, a surprise. So auditors rarely interview crews at sea in their own language with the captain out of earshot, because if the captain's there and they're being held against their will or there's some kind of fishery slave stuff going on and the captain's, like, right there, they're not gonna say anything. They're just gonna be like, "Yeah, this is what happens." Even though they can probably be rescued and probably be helped. they're scared.

2:55 They don't have their passport, they don't have access to their families, they've been abused emotionally, mentally, physically, and they could die. So they're not gonna share any kind of information with authorities if they're near any kind of authority on the boat, like a captain or something like that. let's talk about what this, like, gap in the supply chain is really about. Western Sahara is a territory on the Atlantic coast of North Africa, so Morocco has controlled most of it since 1970s, and European courts have ruled more than once that it's legally separate from Morocco, and that trade deals with Morocco don't cover it without consent of the Sahrawi people who live there. Now Western Sahara has at least 14 fish meal plants, and according to The Outlaw Ocean Project, their owners often label the product as Moroccan before it ships.

3:43 They kinda hide it. So one of those plants, run by a company called Delta Ocean in the city of Laâyoune, supplies fish meal to a Turkish company called Kilyos Deniz. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, makes fish feed and runs sea bass farms. Those farms have held Aquaculture Stewardship Council certification since 2019, and according to the report by DeSmog, they supply three of Britain's biggest supermarket chains. Now, when reporters from The Outlaw Ocean Project asked, one of those supermarkets, Sainsbury's, said its supplier had given written assurances that its sea bass feed didn't come from the company's name, so, like, Delta Ocean and Kilyos Deniz, and those companies did not respond for comments by the Outlaw Ocean Project.

4:24 So the farm can meet the standard while the feed's origins, rest on paperwork, That's pretty much the gap that we're seeing here. And Seafood Watch says openly that its ratings cover environmental impact and that the labor risk sits in a separate tool built for businesses. So Marine Trust says it's a standard setter whose rules are grounded in science, but critics point out that it's governed largely by members of the fishmeal industry's own trade group. Bit of a conflict of interest, especially if they're not transparent. Both things can be true. Like, you can still have, a certification. You still think everything's going well, but there's still a gap. Now remember Gunjur in The Gambia that I talked about a couple of episodes ago? Remember it was that lagoon, that turned red in 2017 and again in 2025?

5:07 The plant next to it is called Golden Lead. According to trade records compiled by the Outlaw Ocean Project, Golden Lead sent at least 10 shipments of fish meal between 2022 and 2023 to a shrimp feed mill in Vietnam called Grobest. That mill holds a certification from the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. Now, Grobest sells shrimp feed to hatcheries and farms in Vietnam. Those farms supply some of the country's biggest shrimp exporters, including one called Minh Phu. And Minh Phu 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, which is kind of interesting. The records show a link between these companies.

5:49 They don't prove any particular bag of shrimp contains fish meal from that plant, and nothing suggests that the grocers knew. That's exactly the point though, of all this, Nobody in the chain has asked to look all the way back. Now the chain is public, so everyone can ask, and that's important. Now Tuesday, we looked at farm fish that eat wild fish. Wednesday, those fish were somebody's dinner. And Thursday, the boats are pretty hard to see that catch this fish meal. Now today, the label can't see them either, but you can. In October 2023, a multi-year investigation reported by The New Yorker and The Outlaw Ocean Project documented that Uighur workers had been moved from western China to work in a seafood processing plants on China's east coast under a government labor transfer program.

6:33 Now, seafood from some of those plants were reaching buyers in North America and Europe. So the investigators published trade records showing which companies were connected. Within a day, Highliner Foods, Canada's biggest seafood companies, announced it had cut ties with the suppliers named. The US groceries chain, Albertsons, had already pulled the affected products from their shelves. Lund's Fisheries in New Jersey had cut ties as well. And the following year, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council closed its office in China. Once the buyers could see the chain, it moved in a day. So once you can see that supply chain, you can act. And those companies acted, like I gotta give credit to the companies, they acted fast once they had evidence, And that's the whole lesson.

7:15 Visibility changes the behavior. So the call to action for you today is find your grocery store chain's annual forced labor supply chain report. In Canada, search the chain's name plus the S2011 report. Since 2024, the law requires large companies to publish one every year by May 1st. In the UK, look for the company's modern slavery statement. Check whether it mentions seafood and especially seafood feed. If it doesn't, send the store one line asking, "Why are you not doing this?" In the US, ask customer service whether the store's seafood supply policy covers fish feed. These are all CTAs that are really easy to do, These are all calls to action that you can do. It doesn't take much. All you have to do is send one email.

7:55 It's really not that difficult. And the more of you that send those emails, the more answers we get, the more that these companies realize that people are looking out for this kind of stuff, and we don't wanna have seafood, whether it's farmed or whether it's wild, that are not sustainable and that are using forced labor, or they're using bad practices in fish feed plants, we need to make sure that we know every aspect, and transparency is the key, just like in science. So look, we talked four episodes on the food that feeds our fish, Some farmed seafood takes from the wild ocean, and some, like mussels and oysters, it gives it back because it filter feeds. Those wild fish feed real people, like the ones that are caught for the fish meal. And the communities like Abeny are fighting for them and winning.

8:38 Like, that's the thing, it's changing. But the fight still needs to happen, not only in Africa, but also in Canada, in the US, in the UK, in Australia, wherever there's farmed fish and wherever that's sold. The boats are getting easier to see every single year, and the label is one tool that we can use to make sure that this is sustainable. And your questions are another tool. Ask those questions to those companies. Put their feet to the fire to make sure that they understand that, "Look, yeah, I wanna buy from you, but I wanna make sure you're doing this properly." And think about, like, this a compliance manager at a grocery store, the head office reading an email from a customer. "Does your seafood policy cover fish feed?" Then a second email, and then 100, Next year's report, it'll have a new paragraph.

9:21 Trust me, it'll happen. In 2023, it took the companies one day to act once they could see. Help them see. Help them understand. That's it for this week's episodes, and today's episode, of course. we did all about Fish Feed. I wanna thank, Maya Martin from the Outlaw Ocean Project for coming on the show on Monday, helping us with all this stuff, and then being able to research it on their websites. I'll put the links to the websites, that they, provided. So much information, a five-year-long investigative report, that really revealed a lot, a lot of scary stuff, but a lot of stuff that needed to happen to get out into the open so that we can see what was happening. and I think that's important. and I'm glad that we were able to do it.

10:02 I'm glad I was able to present it to you. Obviously, not glad, that's happening, but it's something that we can work to stop. And I wanna thank you so much for listening, and I'd love to hear your comments. This is the start of a conversation. I'd love for you to continue and have that conversation with me. And I wanna thank you so much for listening to this week's episode, to this episode, this week's episodes, and of course, the podcast in general. Don't forget to hit that follow button to make sure that you are following along and you don't miss each and every episode. Next week, we're gonna be talking about MPAs and marine protected areas and education and why it's so important, with an MPA expert and an education expert. And she's amazing. you're gonna be able to meet her, Judy Mann Lang, and she's awesome, and I can't wait for you to hear from her. And so I thank ya. So just don't forget to follow the podcast.

10:43 And thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.