Boston, MA – Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) announced today a new partnership with Thai Union Group, the world’s third-largest seafood company, including global brands like Red Lobster and Chicken of the Sea. Thai Union commits to making its seafood supply chain more sustainable by actively driving change and requiring suppliers to participate in fishery improvement projects (FIPs) and Supply Chain Roundtables (SRs).
“Our partnership with Thai Union continues SFP’s tradition of innovation and creating fisheries improvement at scale and globally by working with major seafood buyers to leverage change in their sourcing and supply chains,” said Jim Cannon, founder and chief executive officer of SFP. “Lasting conservation and environmental improvement can only be achieved with industry leadership by companies like Thai Union, who can advance widespread adoption of best sustainability practices.”
See here for the Thai Union Statement on Partnership with SFP.
Thai Union initially began participating in SFP’s Ocean Disclosure Project in early 2021, to demonstrate a commitment to transparency as part of its SeaChange program.
Over the past 15 years, SFP created the model for fisheries conservation that is the standard approach to seafood sustainability by retailers, foodservice companies, and brands around the world.
“We innovated new ways of working, like our Supply Chain Roundtables, which bring together companies in a sector pre-competitively to maximize their conservation benefits,” said Cannon.
“We are proud of our leadership in finding new sustainability solutions for seafood transparency, mapping seafood supply chains, and identifying the risks in source fisheries.”
SFP’s tools and technologies are now the most-used methods for monitoring and assessing progress in seafood sustainability and fisheries improvement around the world. These include the Ocean Disclosure Project, the leading global seafood transparency platform; FishSource; and Seafood Metrics.
“We have made tremendous progress, but our work is not yet done,” said Cannon. “To make seafood sustainable, we need to tackle tough challenges that current fisheries improvement efforts have not yet solved.”
To meet these challenges, SFP is launching a series of broad-scale initiatives aimed at protecting ocean wildlife; ensuring that small-scale fishers can participate fully in fisheries management; combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and improving regional management of aquaculture production.
As part of SFP’s Protecting Ocean Wildlife initiative, a new industry-led, international effort to protect endangered, threatened and protected (ETP) species, Thai Union will conduct a “bycatch audit” of its tuna supply chain. Bycatch, the catch of non-target species, is one of the most significant issues affecting the biological sustainability of marine fisheries. This assessment will review the bycatch risks to sharks, seabirds, marine mammals and sea turtles in Thai Union’s source fisheries.