Correspondence
Email sent to two contact addresses for Tampa Bay Fisheries.
The email said: "We’re contacting you in light of our latest investigation which concerns the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry, specifically North Korean workers in Chinese plants. 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 Dandong city, close to China’s border with North Korea. As part of this work, we have information that as recently as December 2023, there were 50-70 workers at Dalian Haiqing Food Co. Ltd. in Dandong. According to trade records, Tampa Bay Fisheries was the consignee for multiple shipments of seafood from Dalian Haiqing between June 2020 and September 2023. The use of North Korean workers was prohibited by the United Nations Security Council in 2017, with Resolution 2397. Furthermore, 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. Like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which pertains to Xinjiang labor, CAATSA has a "rebuttable presumption" whereby all North Korean workers are presumed to be state-sponsored forced labor.
As a result, we have several questions: 1) While we understand that you may not be aware of the above issues, we want to ask if Tampa Bay Fisheries has any comment about this information that we are presenting? 2) Can you please itemize for us, which of your customers receive seafood tied to Dalian Haiqing? 3) Has Tampa Bay Fisheries conducted any social audits at this plant and if so what type, when, with what result, and were these audits unannounced? 4) If audits were indeed conducted at this plant, what - if any - language or process was included in those audits specifically to identify the presence of North Korean workers?"
The Outlaw Ocean Project emailed: “We haven’t heard back from you on this and wanted to see if you had any response at this time. To clarify, we are referring to a collection of plants at or near this location: Name: Dalian Haiqing Food (大连海青水产有限公司) 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) We are aware that Dalian Haiqing Food has several plants under its umbrella at this general location.”