In a welcome example of proactive engagement with Human Rights at Sea , MarinTrust has issued a formal response to HRAS’s Review Questionnaire. This comesone day after the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch issued its own response to the broader HRAS report v1.1 dated 6 March 2023.

HRAS welcomes the detailed response, which outlines the ways in which MarinTrust and its registered Certification Bodies (CBs)¹ record and respond to human, social and labour rights abuses.

No Human Rights Abuses Reported

MarinTrust reports that ‘to date, no reports via the CB, or directly, have been received regarding human rights abuses.’ However, it then assures that ‘systems are in place to deal with them if they are raised,’ including immediate withdrawal if critical nonconformities are uncovered.

HRAS welcomes this information but notes that a lack of reported incidents is not a clean bill of health.

49% of marine ingredients produced globally are covered by MarinTrust, with each factory site required by MarinTrust to achieve certification of its supplier fisheries.² According to recent research by the Pew Charitable Trust, there are approximately 100,000 fishing-related deaths globally per year.³ Given these statistics, it is incumbent upon MarinTrust and its CBs to continually deepen and refine their efforts to uncover abuses where none have so far been found.

Libby Woodhatch, Executive Chair of the MarinTrust Governing Body said: “We welcome this questionnaire as an opportunity for standards to continuously improve and demonstrate improvement. With the upcoming Version 3 of our Factory standard, to be launched later this year, we will be extending our scope and enhancing human rights criteria.

We believe the questionnaire also contributes to helping all our stakeholders better understand what the MarinTrust standard stands for, i.e., a third-party business to business standard with the marine ingredients production factory as its unit of certification – not a fishery standard”. 

MarinTrust’s Public Acknowledgment of Suspensions

HRAS particularly welcomes MarinTrust’s publicly available listing of organisations that have had their certificates suspended or withdrawn. This is vital for transparency and relatively unusual amongst scheme owners.

Continued Transparency and Engagement 

HRAS will continue to engage with MarinTrust to understand their processes and policies in a transparent and fair manner, whilst finalising Version 2.0 of the Certification, Standards and Ratings Review.

[1] Registered Certification Bodies are approved to conduct certification and assessment services on behalf of MarinTrust.

[2] https://www.marin-trust.com/about-us/what-we-do/key-figures (Accessed 06/07/23).

[3] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases-and-statements/2022/11/03/more-than-100000-people-die-annually-across-global-fishing-sector-new-research-shows (Accessed 06/07/23).