The Seafood Ethics Common Language Group

The Seafood Ethics Common Language Group (SECLG) provides a safe meeting space to discuss the key ethical issues faced by the international seafood industry. The group looks at social welfare issues that affect the UK seafood supply chain, whether in the UK or seafood imported into the UK. This covers human trafficking, labour abuses, child labour, debt bondage, forced labour, migrant workers, and modern slavery. It is an opportunity to share new ideas or best practice case studies from around the world.

The group is led by our industry and we take responsibility for running the SECLG. The Group has met twice a year since 2014. The SECLG brings together seafood industry representatives from major supermarket chains, smaller retailers, processors, foodservice and the catching sector.  Other people who attend are not-for-profit voluntary groups, welfare charities, consumer groups, government and social research scientists.

SECLG meetings and bite size meetings

There are generally two meetings a year. The presentations and minutes from the most recent meetings are below. Presentations and minutes from previous meetings are available from Karen Green.

Due to Covid-19 we are running shorter online bite-size SECLG meetings in 2020 and 2021

Next meeting

The next meeting will be on 10 June 2021 from 2pm to 3.30pm BST. Recruitment challenges for the seafood sector.

Previous two bite-size meetings

Standards and at-sea labour practices (25 March 2021). We are seeing the growth of voluntary labour certification standards to demonstrate socially responsible labour practices on vessels in wild-capture fisheries. This meeting looked at how these voluntary standards and initiatives have developed and are evolving, and how they could be benchmarked in the future. See the presentations:

• New FISH (Fairness, Integrity, Safety and Health) Standard for Crew. Mike Kraft, FISH Standard.
• Update on the Responsible Fishing Vessel Scheme (RFVS). Mike Platt and Melanie Siggs, Global Seafood Practices.
• FisheryProgress Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) social policy and Social Risk Assessments (SRA). Kristin Sherwood, FishChoice.
• Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI)/Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative (SSCI) At-Sea Operations Framework. Thomas van Haaren, CGF.

Increasing transparency on fishing vessels (28 January 2021). This meeting looked at initiatives and technological developments to improve our understanding of vessel activity and patterns of behaviour at sea. This sheds light on whether vessel operators are fishing responsibly, but also the likelihood that they are treating their crew and fishery observers fairly, and complying with recognised labour rules. See the presentations:

• Forced labour risk model. Courtney Farthing, Global Fishing Watch.
• Labour indicators for vessel tracking and risk assessments. Brad Soule, OceanMind.
• The impact of failures to underpin the safety, security and well-being of fisheries observers. David Hammond, Human Rights at Sea.

Terms of Reference and archive

SECLG meeting notes and minutes

• Notes on SECLG bite-size meeting. 25 March 2021
• Notes on SECLG bite-size meeting. 28 January 2021
• Notes on SECLG bite-size meeting. 12 November 2020
• Notes on SECLG bite-size meeting. 2 September 2020
• Notes on SECLG bite-size meeting. 8 July 2020
• Notes on SECLG bite-size meeting. 27 May 2020

• For more information on this work and to download Seafish briefing papers, visit our Social Responsibility in Seafood webpage 

Our social responsibility work

• Social responsibility is a key work area for us. As well as running the SECLG we also support the seafood industry in a number of key areas to help eliminate unethical practices from UK seafood supply chains. To find out more read our Social Responsibility in Seafood briefing note 

Contacts