Correspondence
Email sent to two contact addresses at Cité Marine.
The email said that the company's supplier Qingdao Tianyuan Aquatic Products has received persons from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China under a state-imposed labor transfer program. The email also asked for comment.
The Outlaw Ocean Project emailed Cité Marine saying that its supplier Qingdao Lian Yang Aquatic Products, which is linked to Qingdao Tianyuan by corporate ownership, has received persons from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China under the state-imposed labor transfer program. The project's investigation demonstrates the presence of Uyghur workers at Qingdao Lian Yang as recently as April 2023. The email asked for comment.
After The Outlaw Ocean Project had twice emailed Cité Marine, publishing partner Le Monde reached out to the company and included the full text of the two earlier emails. Le Monde also asked for comment.
Sylvie Gey, Assistant General Manager at Cité Marine, responded that they had not received the previous emails and asked: "Could you tell us what is the framework of your journalistic work and for what purposes your requests are intended? Depending on the information you provide us with, we could then arrange an appointment."
The Outlaw Ocean Project’s publishing partner Le Monde reiterated the questions raised by The Outlaw Ocean in its two prior emails to Cité Marine, and noted they had been sent to email addresses frequently used by the company.
Sylvie Gey replied to say that Cité Marine does not work with the company Lian Yang Aquatic Products, and that the Qingdao Tianyuan Aquatic Product company is MSC certified: “This standard guarantees compliance with social standards, including the absence of forced labor.” The email said that Qingdao Tianyuan has also been subject to regular social audits for several years under the SMETA benchmark, and these have never revealed any use of Uyghur forced labor. When Cité Marine became aware of the investigation, it immediately commissioned a new unannounced SMETA audit, which did not find Uyghur forced labor. The supplier also denied ever employing Uyghur workers in a forced manner. As a precaution, however, Cité Marine has ceased being supplied by that factory.
The Outlaw Ocean Project emailed: "We last emailed Cité Marine on September 15, 2023, regarding our investigation into the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry. Our ongoing investigation has uncovered additional evidence which we wanted to bring to your attention.
We have investigators on the ground in China who have been engaging with labor brokers directly involved with the transfer of North Korean workers to factories in China. Through this and other investigative means, including collecting online footage from the plants and interviews with workers recently returned to North Korea from China, we’ve found large numbers of North Korean workers at a range of seafood processing plants in Liaoning province, on China’s border with North Korea.
We have information that as recently as December 2023, there were 50-70 workers at Dalian Haiqing Food Co. Ltd. in Liaoning.
According to trade records seen by The Outlaw Ocean Project, Cité Marine was the consignee for shipments of seafood from Dalian Haiqing between January 2020 and November 2023.
The use of overseas North Korean workers was prohibited by the United Nations Security Council in 2017, with Resolution 2397 setting a deadline of December 2019 for the repatriation of all such workers to North Korea. Under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), passed in 2017, the United States prohibits the import of any goods produced by North Korean nationals unless clear and convincing evidence is provided that indicates the materials were not made with forced labor.
Given the above, we have some questions for Cité Marine:
- While we understand that you may not be aware of the above issues, we want to ask if Cité Marine has any comment to make in response to this email?
- Can you confirm or deny if Cité Marine has supplied any seafood from Dalian Haiqing to any of the following: Aldi, Auchan, Carrefour, Casino, Franprix, Grand Frais, Intermarché, E.Leclerc, Lidl, or Sysco France?"
Aline Marchon, Quality Manager at Cité Marine, emailed: "We have just read your email and we apologize for our late response. Of course, we were not aware of these practices. Haiqing is actually one of our suppliers of yellow fine sole. We know that it has several factories in the Liaoning. But the materials we have purchased only come from one factory. Can you specify which factory is implicated so that we can identify if it is the factory that supplies us? I precize that I’m in charge of this kind of topics. Please contact me directly, instead of the email addresses below that are the wrong recipients."
The Outlaw Ocean Project replied: "Thank you very much for your email, and for engaging with us and our investigation.
As a journalism outlet, we are unable to provide anything that risks exposing our sources to retribution or penalty from authorities in China and/or North Korea. That said, we do not wish to hinder your investigation into the allegations and will share what additional context we feel safely able to at this time.
As you acknowledged in your email of February 16, 2024, Dalian Haiqing operates multiple plants from the same area in Zhuanghe City, Liaoning (Address: Floor 1-3, No. 9, Section 2, Jianshe Street, Zhuanghe City, Dalian, Liaoning Province 辽宁省大连庄河市新华街道小寺委建设大街二段9号1-3层).
One of our investigators in China visited this site on our behalf, providing video footage from the grounds. Haiqing displays its branding at each of the facilities, and Chinese corporate records indicate it is still the parent company. We used mapping software and open source footage to independently confirm the location of this investigator’s visit.
Our investigator who visited the plant was accompanied by a businessman who works with the plant. This businessman also identified the dorms and said that Haiqing employed 50-70 North Korean workers and has done so since 2021.
Our investigation has also interviewed North Korean workers who worked as recently as 2023 at facilities they said were owned by Haiqing. These workers, most of them women, described their time doing seafood processing at Haiqing plants and some of them described sexual coercion from their managers and sex for pay.
Has Cité Marine carried out any social audits at Haiqing’s facilities in Liaoning? If so, how recently were these conducted and by whom? Did those audits have any processes in place for identifying the presence of North Koreans?"
Aline Marchon, Quality Manager at Cité Marine, responded: "Thanks for your reply. Of course, we strongly condemn such facts, if they are true.
You mention the following adress : Address: Floor 1-3, No. 9, Section 2, Jianshe Street, Zhuanghe City, Dalian, Liaoning Province. Is this the exact address at which the reports were made?
As part of our responsible purchasing policy, we have the following prerequisites:
- Establishment of a risk map by country of origin
- For the highest risks (e.g. China) : guarantee of carrying out social audits (SMETA or BSCI)
- Signature of the commitment to respect our CSR charter by our suppliers. It incorporates the UN's main Sustainable Development Goals. By signing this commitment, the supplier guarantees compliance with all clauses as well as the acceptance of unannounced audits, in addition to planned social audits.
In addition, for many years, we have also been working with independant chinese quality controllers (who are not employed by the supplier), who carry out quality checks of our products in the factories, during productions, for us. This is an additional service that we pay for in order to guarantee compliance with our specifications. Although their mission is not to carry out social audits (which could put them in difficulty), we have very regular exchanges with them, and we can interview them informally. Regarding this specific case, we therefore questioned our supplier, as well as the independent quality control team. The supplier denies having North Korean employees. And the quality control team confirms that they have never seen any North Korean employees present in the factory they inspect for us.
This factory has been audited by SMETA (25/07/23) and BSCI (03/07/23). These 2 audit frameworks verify the number of foreign employees. No foreign employees were found.
Furthermore, we also carry out our own quality audits, and we were just present in the factory that makes our products on November (the 22 of november). Of course, the subject of the audit was essentially on quality system, but during this time, we have also been attentive about the attitude of the workers. We constated that there was a social management policy (team building, employee of the year, bonus for the best employees...). This is not common in Chinese factories."