The quest for Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) in seafood supply chains has been rapidly evolving and it is critical that the seafood industry gets it right. Managing HRDD effectively minimizes the risk of challenges that could affect consumer confidence and the options to grow seafood consumption in U.S. markets. As with any sustainability strategy, there is a need to evaluate and evolve to ensure maximize compliance as well as to minimize the cost.
Social responsibility is usually managed in seafood supply chains through social audits and is a core requirement for many retailers to manage the risk of this critical issue. However, many of the biggest processing companies overseas complain about “audit fatigue” and how some audits can require different, and in some cases, conflicting compliance points for the same issue. Furthermore, sometimes audits can be repeated four to six times in a calendar year for different end-users. While one may conclude that multiple audits result in better assurance, the opposite may be true.
Effective grievance mechanisms, especially third-party worker voice tools, have been shown to be effective tools to ensure greater compliance, but their existence in HRDD is minimal to-date.
This panel will discuss the need for revisiting the social assurance equation and explore options to create win-win scenarios by allowing the use of worker voice tools to lower the total number of audits required.
