Seafood producer Thai Union Group has teamed up with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) to further improve transparency in the company's supply chains and consider wider impacts on biodiversity.
The agreement with SFP, which is dedicated to delivering healthy marine and aquatic ecosystems as well as a secure seafood supply through the creation of a responsible seafood economy, will allow ongoing audits of Thai Union's supply chains.
Thai Union remains engaged at SFP roundtables critical to the company's supply chains.
SFP's existing partners actively drive change in fisheries and aquaculture by using their leverage to mobilise improvements within their supply chains. SFP and Thai Union want to amplify and scale efforts to improve supply chains, said the duo.
The partnership with SFP allows Thai Union to continue and deepen its participation in the Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP), with supply chain and sustainability information to be made publicly available through the ODP platform.
"Thai Union is constantly exploring new opportunities to strengthen transparency across its entire operations, and our partnership with SFP is further evidence of that unwavering commitment," said Adam Brennan, group director for sustainability at Thai Union. "A key element of this new partnership will be Thai Union's ability to use SFP's seafood metrics system, which helps businesses evaluate the sustainability of their seafood, understand the effectiveness of existing improvement efforts, and identify the most important priorities for improvements."
SFP's seafood metrics will allow Thai Union to continue to improve the monitoring, transparency and traceability of its supply chains, as well as assess and monitor its global wild and farmed supply chains used in its businesses in the EU, US and Asia, he said. Seafood metrics aggregates and tracks information on governance quality, target stock health, human rights risks, and environmental impacts in a company's source fisheries.
Additional sustainability indicators, such as certifications, human rights risk assessment, NGO ratings and traceability will be included in the monitoring, said Mr Brennan.
SFP is undertaking a new industry-led, international effort to protect endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species. This novel initiative engages and mobilises the seafood industry and the entire supply chain to reduce the worldwide bycatch of ETP species, including sharks, seabirds, marine mammals and sea turtles.