Walmart-at-the-Crossroads-FINAL-06.04.15

chain. “Walmart has still failed to commit to chain-of-custody traceability or to avoiding
Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) seafood products. It has neither taken proactive
stances internally, nor delved into the political arena by supporting active legislation on these very
issues. Given the size of the retailer, this is problematic.”
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Walmart’s sustainability guidelines do stipulate that all its suppliers of seafood must be “thirdparty
certified as sustainable using Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Best Aquaculture Practices
(BAP)”
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or involved in a couple of other listed sustainability initiatives. However, MSC and the other
initiatives Walmart lists, with the exception of BAP, are environmental-only standards that do not assess
human rights violations in seafood supply chains. BAP is a certification organized and implemented by
the trade group Global Aquaculture Alliance, which includes producers, importers, retailers, and
restaurant chains including Walmart. Although BAP does include social standards, Walmart
has shown that it is unwilling to address issues when social issues arise out of BAPcertified
facilities.
In 2013, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) and Warehouse Workers United released
a report documenting violations of child labor and workers’ rights laws at Walmart supplier Narong
Seafood in Thailand.
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Some of the problems included underage workers, non-payment of legally
owed wages, falsified documents and excessive fees charged to migrant workers.
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The factory had
undergone BAP inspections, but ILRF’s interviews with workers uncovered some serious flaws. One
worker reported that the auditors “just look[ed] around the factory and sp[oke] mostly to the
management.” Workers also reported that managers selected the workers to be interviewed by auditors
or Labor Ministry officials and instructed them on how to answer questions. One interviewee said that
workers do “not dare to tell the true situation at the factory.” Workers also reported that on the days
that monitors visited the factory, workers were told by management to “wear [their] uniform[s] neatly”
and “work more slowly and systematically than on other days.”*
After the report on Narong Seafood appeared in several media articles, Walmart said it had
stopped sourcing from Narong a year earlier, as a result of its auditing process, despite USDA
identification numbers that indicated Walmart purchased shrimp from the facility.
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Interviews with
* According to the ILRF, Walmart claimed that it had actually discontinued use of Narong
Seafood before the research was conducted because its own audit of the factory raised red
flags, but registration numbers with the Food and Drug Administration and shipping records
contradict this claim.
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