Australian retailers are being urged to do more to ensure their imported seafood is not being produced by slave labour.
The Seeing Slavery in Seafood Supply Chains report, published in the journal Science Advances on Thursday, aims to promote better awareness among seafood buyers, sellers and traders.
One of the report’s authors, University of Technology Sydney adjunct professor Trevor Ward, worked with companies to get them asking questions about the origins of their seafood.
“Our approach was that business and the private sector had a responsibility to do their share to correct slavery wherever it occurs,” he told SBS News.
He and his co-authors hope seafood companies, now armed with these tools, will do more to ensure they only buy from sources with proper labour practices.
The Walk Free Foundation, which aims to stamp out slavery by mobilising global activists, estimates 40 million people are held in slavery around the world on any given day – the UN International Labour Organisation defines forced labour or slavery as “work or service exacted from any person under the menace of penalty and for which the person has not offered himself voluntarily”.
