Thailand’s military government and leaders of the country’s lucrative but tainted fishing industry have been holding their collective breath this week while a visiting European Union delegation assesses practices and standards in order to decide if seafood from Thailand should be banned.
The EU issued Thailand a ‘yellow card’ in April by way of a rebuke for the illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing practices of the world’s third largest seafood exporter. Europe consumes about 10% of Thailand’s seafood exports.
EU inspections are ongoing until Thursday and results are due to be released in February. Ahead of the delegation’s arrival last week, Thai authorities gave reporters a last-minute rundown on remedial steps taken over the past eight months.
“I am confident that the EU will lift the yellow card — or at least maintain the yellow flag for another six months and not give us the red card,” said Poj Aramwattananont, chairman of the Thai Fishery Producers Coalition, which includes eight fishery associations.
Speaking to reporters last week, he described the issues as “wide and deeply rooted” but said the industry “realizes this is important and stands by our commitment to support the government’s policy on IUU fishing and combatting labor abuse”.
Thai Union Group, the world’s largest canned tuna processor, said on Monday that it has taken on over 1,000 workers who used to work for its suppliers. The company stopped using pre-processing suppliers for its shrimp products at the end of December and brought all operations on board in order to monitor the treatment of workers directly.
“This is a positive step towards our goal of ridding the Thai seafood sector of illegal labor practices,” Chief Executive Thiraphong Chansiri said in a statement. Thai Union had been accused in a Greenpeace report of failing to ensure vessels free from forced labor supplied its products.
Concerns that the Thai seafood industry has been using illegal labor, particularly migrant workers from neighboring countries, have mounted globally along with the evidence.
The U.S. annual Trafficking in Persons report ranked Thailand in the bottom Tier 3 in 2015, citing the fishing industry as a sector in particular need of improvement.
Seafood processing is extremely labor intensive, and Thailand has taken.
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