Correspondence
Email sent to the press contact at Martin & Servera.
The email said: "I’m writing to you in light of our latest investigation, which concerns abuses in the Chinese squid fishing and seafood processing industry, and links we’ve discovered between companies engaged in abuses and suppliers in your supply chain - Nordic Seafoods and Nomad Foods. Northseafood Holland and Unibond Seafood International are white fish suppliers to Nomad Foods brands, which include the Birds Eye, Findus and Iglo ranges retailing across Europe. Northseafood Holland has imported shipments of white fish from the processor, Yantai Sanko Fisheries Co. Ltd., based in China. Yantai Sanko Fisheries Co. Ltd. has received persons from the Xinjiang region of China under a government labor transfer program since 2019 and until at least April 2023. Unibond Seafood has imported shipments of white fish from Qingdao Tianyuan Aquatic Foodstuffs Co. Ltd., a supplier based in China. Qingdao Tianyuan has also received persons transferred by the Chinese government from the Xinjiang region since 2020 and until at least May 2023. Documentation produced by Nordic Seafood in 2022 shows that the company has been supplied squid from a Chinese processor called Rongcheng Xinhui Aquatic Products Co. Ltd. We have visual evidence of Rongcheng Xinhui receiving squid catch from a Chinese squid jigger called the Zhen Fa 7. In a seven-month period, one Zhen Fa 7 crew member died and a second was disembarked for emergency medical treatment after suffering serious mistreatment and abuse while on board the vessel. Our reporting also documents multiple indicators of forced labor among crew onboard the vessel: recruitment linked to debt, deceptive recruitment, enforced isolation, degrading living conditions, physical violence, wage withholding, the retention of personal identity documents and strong financial penalties for leaving employment. Our investigation further shows that Nordic Seafoods’ French and UK subsidiaries have been supplied by at least two other Chinese squid processors supplied by vessels engaged in human rights abuses and illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing; and at least three processors tied to forced labor affecting Xinjiang ethnic minorities. Nordic Seafoods is owned by Nissui Corporation, which operates other US, French, and Danish subsidiaries heavily implicated in our investigation. Further details about these findings are available on request.
According to our research, a range of Nordic Seafood products, including squid marked as Chinese origin, are offered on the Martin & Servera website, and Nomad ‘Findus’ frozen seafood products are sold by Martin & Servera. While we recognize that you may not be aware of the issues outlined above, we wish to ask if Martin & Servera has any comment or clarification to make in response to the above information? Can you confirm or deny if any seafood products sourced from Nordic Seafood or Nomad are provided by Martin & Servera under food service contracts to local authorities and state institutions?"
Eduardo López, Sustainability and Quality Assurance Manager, replied: "Thank you very much for the information given in the email below. You are completely right! We were not aware of the ongoing investigations and didn’t know about the situation of violations of the human rights and workers’s right linked to these two suppliers (Nomad Foods and Nordic Seafood).
All our suppliers have accepted Martin & Servera Code of conduct that describe their obligation as follow: “All of Martin & Servera’s suppliers, middle men as well as direct producers, shall obey the Code of Conduct, and are expected to be able to prove that they have done all in their own power to full-fill the requirements, as well as that of their suppliers in turn. Suppliers are obliged to know of where in the supply-chains risks of non-compliances to the Code of Conduct are prevalent and be able to denote how these risks are mitigated and remedied. In regions where great poverty or other challenges in respecting human rights exist, we expect that suppliers and sub-suppliers work for continuous improvement in collaboration with local authorities, non-governmental organizations, Martin & Servera and other buying stakeholders.”
Martin & Servera consider and gives this situation high priority.
we wish to ask if Martin & Servera has any comment or clarification to make in response to the above information? We have already started an investigation with these two suppliers of their own labelled products (A-brand). The objective is to know their versions of the information given by you. What have they done ? Have they been in contact with you to meet the accusations? What are they doing to mitigate and or remediate these abuses from happening again? How will they proceed when working with their Chinese sub-suppliers in the long term?
Martin & Servera as members of ETI Sweden has informed the other ETI-member organizations and urged ETI Sweden to inform their sister organizations in other countries and to coordinate the investigations and follow up activities.
We have requested information from Nordic Seafood and Nomad Foods by email and we've already hold meeting activities with them to get a better/complete picture around these unacceptable accusations.
Can you confirm or deny if any seafood products sourced from Nordic Seafood or Nomad are provided by Martin & Servera under food service contracts to local authorities and state institutions?
To be able to answer this question we need to wait for our suppliers’ ongoing internal investigations. Then we should be able to clearly show if there are any sea products, from the production sites named in your email, and sold to our customers, not only to our public customers."
The Outlaw Ocean Project asked if there was a timeline for the investigations referred to in Martin and Servera's reply.
Martin and Servera replied that they had "no timeline yet for the investigations, but are in contact with both suppliers and requiring continuous updating. They both have already told us that they have tried to contact you and trying to get some more evidence." They also asked: "How will you proceed with your own investigations and eventual publication? Have you contacted some of the ETI organizations? We have been informed that other European NGO has been involved and consulted."
The Outlaw Ocean Project replied: "We hope to publish the findings of our investigation in the coming months. We have contacted hundreds of companies and organizations, including bodies that develop social audit frameworks, in connection with diverse elements of our investigation. Thank you for that clarity on the timeline issue."