Unethical activity from fraud to human rights abuses plague the seafood industry, according to Mark Kaplan, Co-Founder of Wholechain, a blockchain based traceability system. And while there is no single solution, he believes that the tools available from certification schemes to data sharing can help make these supply chains more ethical.
Evidence of human trafficking aboard distant water vessels has grown “exponentially” in the past few years, report from the Financial Transparency Coalition states. The issue has become so widespread, Kaplan tells Food Tank, that in some circles it’s hardly a secret.
Seafood—or blue foods—may also be purposefully mislabeled, over-treated with water to make a product heavier and therefore more expensive, or given additives such as coloring agents.
For eaters trying to avoid unsustainable practices, surprisingly cheap prices can be one signal that dishonest or illegal practices are at play. “You don’t even need to be a food systems expert to analyze this. It’s either labor abuse or the product is inauthentic or it’s laden with artificial ingredients,” Kaplan tells Food Tank. There has been some “practice of cheating to get that cost super low.”
But solving these challenges is critical for the sustainability of food systems due to the nutritional and environmental benefits that aquatic foods offer, Kaplan believes. More than 3 billion people around the world rely on them for protein and vital nutrients, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. And Kaplan explains that there is a “disproportionately low climate impact for blue foods” compared to land based agriculture, particularly livestock.
That’s why Kaplan is taking steps to combat these challenges, pushing for solutions that help all supply chain actors track a product from sea to plate.
“I often hear and observe…this misguided belief that there’s some kind of silver bullet to solve sustainability,” Kaplan tells Food Tank, calling the idea “delusional.” He argues that instead, it will take a complementary “suite of tools,” including data sharing, data standards, certification systems, and true definitions of terms in conversations around transparency.
Listen to the full conversation with Mark Kaplan on Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg by clicking HERE to learn about the solutions that he wants to see implemented to make seafood more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable; the importance of blue foods to the livelihoods of communities globally; and why improvements don’t automatically translate to products that carry a higher price tag.
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Photo courtesy of Juan Gomez, Unsplash
