When you buy seafood, you may notice a blue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo – and you might think this certification helps fishers and factory workers, as well as the environment. The MSC seafood certification was originally set up in 1997 to address over-fishing, an area of critical importance. However, in response to growing human rights concerns, MSC started to consider human rights more. In 2014, entities convicted of forced or child labor became ineligible for certification. From 2018, the MSC required fisheries to report measures to mitigate risks of forced or child labor, and in 2019, introduced audits to the supply chain outside of vessels to provide assurance on the lack of forced or child labor. MSC had plans to look into requiring certificate holders to have human rights policies and grievance mechanisms. Industry sources highlight buying MSC certified seafood was a central part of some businesses’ approach to respecting human rights.

As MSC increased its focus on human rights, it received criticism. For instance, in a review of seafood certifications, Human Rights at Sea found MSC to be one of the worst for human rights accountability. MSC replied that though its focus was overfishing, its human rights requirements were significant. However, recent high-profile reports have found further egregious labor abuses. Ocean Outlaw found forced labor in processing plants with an MSC chain-of-custody certificate. Sustainability Incubator highlighted forced labor and untreated workplace injuries on vessels in MSC certified fisheries. Where MSC does require reporting on conditions on vessels, it is not done by independent evaluators, but rather is self-reported by seafood companies. Further, self-reporting is rarely done by the vessel owners who are legally responsible for conditions, but rather is often done by buyers or others who have limited awareness of conditions on vessels.

These reports have prompted MSC to emphasize that it is not and will not be a human rights tool. MSC noted ‘…the focus of MSC’s work is to address the immense challenge of overfishing and the environmental difficulties that this poses for the ocean… The MSC ecolabel does not offer an assurance on forced or child labour. The article’s claim that we do is based on isolated use of the word taken out of context, ignoring the multiple times that we have emphasized the ecological focus of our program and the absence of a social claim from our ecolabel.’ MSC has essentially stated that it should not be part of any human rights policy. This is valuable clarity. MSC should tell this to all businesses that may be using MSC as part of their human rights policy. It should also support remediation for those who have already suffered abuses in certified fisheries.

So, the question is, without MSC as a tool in their human rights approaches, what direction will retailers and seafood brands take?

One concerning scenario would be just to see buyers moving to another certification or emphasizing audits against their own supplier codes of conduct. While this would likely be better than relying on MSC and there are important differences among standards and their support for human rights, all have significant limitations.

First, certifications rely on audits which have proven to be ineffective to identify abuses. They often lack meaningful engagement with rightsholders. For example, workers can be interviewed by auditors who are hired by their employers, show up in their workplace and inquire, sometimes in a foreign language, about the existence of forced labor. The workers would have no reason to trust the auditor and that giving truthful answers could put themselves at risk. Stronger audits would – and some currently do - strengthen rightsholder engagement – for instance, through inclusive research methods and collaborating with worker representatives. Some businesses are positively carrying out human rights impact assessments (HRIAs).

However, there are more fundamental limitations. Audits are largely paid for by the businesses audited, creating a potential incentive to provide positive findings. There are cases of management weakening audits, such as by falsifying documents. Also, audits don’t consider the root causes of abuses, such as, potentially, buyer procurement practices. While audits can help identify risks, this is only meaningful if businesses effectively act on audit findings, for instance seafood buyers support audited companies to address the risks flagged.

There is a clearly superior approach to be taken - seafood buyers adopting rigorous HRDD approaches. Over a decade ago, the international community endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – which states that companies have a responsibility to know their impacts and take action to mitigate them. This involves analyzing existing practices; ensuring access to grievance mechanisms and remediation; ensuring workers’ voices are heard, including through Wi-Fi on fishing vessels and giving proactive support to freedom of association. At this crossroads, where businesses can’t use MSC for human rights and may be deciding between relying on other standards or a genuine HRDD process, it’s clear that they should choose the latter.

While audits can have a role, businesses must both develop HRDD plans and be clear on the strengths and weaknesses of audits - then bring these tools together to state how they will use audits. While it is encouraging that some businesses recognize the limitations of audits and are committing to move beyond relying solely on them, they still don’t say what the specific limitations are, nor how they fit audits into HRDD plans. Good faith discussions are needed to determine how audits fit into HRDD plans - perhaps around audits with increased rights holder engagement in low risk and HRIAs in high-risk contexts – with businesses investigating, together with rightsholders, common risks in audits, including root causes. This should go alongside support to suppliers to improve human rights performance, and procurement processes that encourage this. Standards should publicly communicate their limitations so that companies better understand how they can support their HRDD efforts.