Swiss food giant Nestle SA and US candy and pet food company Mars on Thursday pledged to take steps to ensure their pet food supply chains are free from human rights abuses and illegally caught seafood — in a move welcomed by campaigners.
Nestle and Mars, the makers of Pedigree and Purina pet food, said they would reduce or eliminate seafood that has been moved by fishing companies from one vessel to another in a practice that enables ships to stay at sea longer.
Greenpeace says the process — known as transshipment — provides an opportunity for vessels to unload illegally caught seafood into supply chains and allows ships to conceal abuses against crew members away from port.
Nestle said it would ban its suppliers from resorting to transshipment at sea, while Mars said it would suspend the use of transshipped products if its seafood suppliers did not tackle problems with the practice.
“Over the past several years, Nestle and Greenpeace have worked together to strengthen Nestle’s policies governing the procurement and responsible sourcing of seafood,” Nestle Purina PetCare Inc head of sustainability Jack Scott said in a statement confirming the ban on transshipments at sea.
Mars said it recognized the risks of transshipment and was committed to working with its suppliers to remedy the problems.
However, “if we cannot resolve these issues to our satisfaction quickly, we will seek to end the use of transshipped products in our supply chains until these serious problems are fixed,” Mars Petcare global sustainability director Isabelle Aelvoet said in a statement.
International companies have come under increasing pressure from consumers and governments to be transparent about how and where their products are sourced amid greater awareness of abuses in supply chains.
Greenpeace said the move by the world’s two largest pet food companies would put “significant” pressure on suppliers to end labor abuses.
The US is the largest consumer of pet food globally, according to the Pet Food Institute, the country’s chief pet food makers trade association.
“The commitment from Nestle and Mars to end transshipment is an important step in tackling the well-documented issue of forced labor in Thailand’s seafood industry,” said Tim Isgitt, a spokesman for US-based human rights group Humanity United.
Thailand, the fourth-largest seafood exporter according to the UN, has been the subject of numerous investigations by rights groups into human trafficking, slavery and violence in its multibillion-dollar seafood industry.
The government has vowed to crack down on human trafficking and slavery and introduced reforms to its fisheries law.
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