Reeling in Abuse: How Conservation Tools Can Help Combat Forced Labor Imports in the Seafood Industry

This report, by ICAR and CSIS, calls on the government to leverage existing conservation tools to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and forced labor.

The seafood industry sits at the intersection of at least four U.S. government priorities: environmental conservation, national security, food safety, and human rights. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing destroys fragile ocean ecosystems, weakens maritime-domain awareness, funds transnational criminal enterprises, undermines food safety standards, and creates a market for seafood harvested or processed using forced labor and human trafficking.

As one of the world’s largest economies and importers of seafood, the United States has outsized influence in ending IUU fishing and the use of forced labor by seafood companies in their business operations and supply chains. Over the past 10 years, the United States has adopted new programs and approaches to combat IUU fishing for conservation purposes; these efforts have produced valuable data and lessons learned that can support U.S. government efforts to end forced labor in the seafood industry and beyond, and specifically to prevent goods produced with forced labor from entering U.S. markets.