Illegal fishing, worker abuse claims leave a bad taste for Bumble Bee Seafood

By Elizabeth Claire Alberts - Mongabay, September 2, 2022

• A new report published by Greenpeace East Asia has found that Bumble Bee Seafoods and its parent company, Fong Chun Formosa Fishery Company (FCF) of Taiwan, are sourcing seafood from vessels involved in human rights abuses as well as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices.
• It found that 13 vessels supplying seafood to Bumble Bee violated Taiwanese fishery regulations, and were even on the Taiwan Fisheries Agency’s (TFA) list of vessels involved in IUU fishing, and that many supply vessels were involved in issues of forced labor and human trafficking.
• Both Bumble Bee and FCF have sustainability and corporate social responsibility policies in place.

On April 10, 2019, a fishing vessel known as Da Wang left Taiwan to sail out into distant waters in search of tuna. Two months into the voyage, a disturbance occurred: the first mate reportedly beat one of the crew members so badly that he died from his injuries. The following year, another crew member was injured while working on the same vessel — but according to reports, his superiors forced him to continue working, and he eventually suffered a stroke.

Yet tuna sourced from this very vessel continues to be packaged and sold for the Bumble Bee Seafood Company and sold in grocery stores in the U.S., according to a new report.

The report, published Sept. 1 by Greenpeace East Asia, suggests that Bumble Bee Seafood and its parent company, Taiwan-based Fong Chun Formosa Fishery Company (or FCF) — one of the top tuna traders in the world — are sourcing seafood from vessels involved not only in human rights abuses, but also in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices. This is despite both companies having corporate social responsibility and sustainability policies in place.

The authors found that 13 vessels supplying seafood to Bumble Bee violated Taiwanese fishery regulations, and were even on the Taiwan Fisheries Agency’s (TFA) list of vessels involved in IUU fishing. Moreover, they identified issues of forced labor and human trafficking on six Taiwanese vessels that supply seafood to Bumble Bee and FCF after conducting interviews with crew members.

Read the entire article here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.