Correspondence
Email sent to Eloise Fanuli, Senior Media Relations Manager at Woolworths.
The email said that Woolworth’s website lists Dagim breaded fillets (from Dagim Tahorim) and Habani squid tubes (from Oriental Merchant). Trade records show shipments of pollock consigned to Dagim Tahorim from Yantai Sanko Fisheries. Yantai Sanko has received persons from the Xinjiang region of China under a state-imposed labor transfer program since 2019 and until at least 2022. Separately, Oriental Merchant has imported shipments of seafood from Shandong Haidu, which has also received persons from the Xinjiang region under a labor transfer program. The email asked: Does Woolworths have any comment on these supply lines?
Eloise Fanuli, Senior Media Manager at Woolworths replied, saying that the query was being shared with the company's Human Rights and Responsible Sourcing teams, and she would let The Outlaw Ocean Project know when she hears back from them.
Eloise Fanuli, Senior Media Manager at Woolworths, emailed: "We're looking into this for your reporting. However, in the meantime, our Human Rights team would be interested in better understanding your team's investigation. Rachel Elliott (in CC) is our General manager of Sustainability - Human Rights. Her team engages with organisations such as yours to better identify supply chain risks we may be exposed to. I'd like to introduce you to discuss more about this specific investigation purely from an advocacy perspective. Any engagement for media reporting and quoting will continue to come from me directly, meaning your team's engagement with Rachel would be off-the-record from a media perspective. Would you be open discussing your work with her team?"
The Outlaw Ocean Project replied: "Thanks for this offer. We’d be happy to engage with her once we have published our findings. For now, our interactions will need to stay on record and for the sake of getting formal on record engagement."