Seafood Industry
Worker Exploitation

Alex Capri ... How Blockchain Could Help End Modern Day Slavery In Asia's Exploitative Seafood Industry

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

How Blockchain Could Help End Modern Day Slavery In Asia's Exploitative Seafood Industry

Blockchain technology is being deployed by civil society groups to make supply chains fully transparent

Eventually, there will be nowhere to hide for fish poachers, human traffickers and unscrupulous middlemen.


Workers help to unload fish from a boat at the port in Songkhla. Around 100 people have been arrested by authorities in a recent crackdown on abuses involving Thailand's multi-billion dollar seafood industry. (Paula Bronstein/ Getty Images )

According to a recent Global Slavery Index report, seafood companies are failing to prevent forced labor and outright slavery in their supply chains.

There are some 300,000 forced-laborers in the Thai fishing industry alone. Many of these people are migrant workers, mostly from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

In 2015, Nestlé--the world’s largest food company--commissioned an audit of its own Thai seafood supply chains. The audit was outsourced to Verite, an NGO, and resulted in a landmark report that documented systemic labor abuses across the seafood industry, in Thailand and beyond.

Since the Verite report, however, investigative reporting by The Guardian has revealed that human trafficking and labor abuses continue, virtually unabated. Human traffickers across Southeast Asia continue to operate, mostly unhindered, with the support of unscrupulous middlemen, subcontractors and labor brokers.

But, could digital technology put a stop to these abuses?

Blockchain technology is being deployed by civil society groups to make supply chains fully transparent , thereby achieving end-to-end traceability. It is a secure, decentralized, distributed digital ledger that stores relevant data regarding any kind of transactional history. It’s a shared, transparent database that’s verifiable by all parties--and it can’t be altered.

Blockchain and traceable seafood

Provenance is an early adopter of blockchain technology in seafood supply chains. The London-based NGO has pioneered a system that traces pole and line-caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna in Indonesia, all the way from “catch-to-consumer.”

Starting in the so-called “first-mile,” after catching a fish and attaching an RFID tag, local fishermen use handheld devices to scan and upload the digital information to the cloud. This data then lodges itself in Provenance’s blockchain ledger, creating a permanent record as the fish passes through each stage of the supply chain, from traders and suppliers to processors and canners, all the way to end consumers.


Thai workers sort fresh fish after it was unloaded from a fishing boat at the port in Songkhla. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/ Getty Images )

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A more recent project, “Bait-to-Plate,” was launched by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and others to combat the illegal fishing of tuna in the Pacific Islands. Like the Provenance approach, bait-to-plate takes data from RFID tags and QR tags and stores it on a blockchain--creating a single point of truth for all stakeholders. At the end of the supply chain, consumers can download an app to trace store-bought tuna all the way back to the source.

Using blockchains to enforce labor standards

The same blockchain technology currently being used to combat illegal and unreported fishing can also be used to eliminate occurrences of forced labor and slavery. Here are some ways to effectively use the blockchain to protect labor workers:

Worker identification

Middlemen and traffickers routinely confiscate passports, identity cards and other documents from migrant workers, turning them into virtual prisoners. A blockchain allows a unique data identifier to be linked to any person, making that individual visible and traceable, thus, holding their employers accountable. Recent advances in biometrics -- such as India’s Aadhaar system -- allow for the creation of unique worker ID databases, which can be monitored by businesses, NGOs and regulatory agencies.

Smart contracts

Posting a worker’s contract on a blockchain creates transparency around wages, work schedules and job requirements. It also prevents potential scams involving “job placement fees”--which essentially put laborers into debt bondage, whereby they pay all their earnings back to the employer.

Payment of wages

Blockchains retain unalterable records of transactions, including payment of wages. By having access to records of digital cash payments or transfers into digital wallets, other stakeholders can be assured workers are being paid the right amounts, on time.

Wearable Tech

Remote monitoring of working conditions and the physical well-being of workers can now be done in real-time, with the use of wearable devices, connected via the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Capturing this kind of data can prevent physical beatings, deprivation of food and water, sexual abuse and instances of laborers being killed and thrown overboard.

But can blockchain alone solve labor abuses or is this yet another example of an over-hyped techno-solution?

Creating an ecosystem around the blockchain presents significant challenges. According to Pavel Bains, CEO of Bluzelle, a Singapore based tech firm that’s revolutionizing decentralized internet data storage, it's not that easy.


Thai fishing boats are docked at the port in Songkhla. Thailand is the world's third-largest exporter of seafood. (Paula Bronstein/ Getty Images )

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Bains says that trying to link blockchain to different operating systems with different protocols can be a non-starter–at least for now. The interoperability of an external blockchain with a large multinational’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, for example, could involve having to grapple with non-compatible data rendering and processing platforms.

Other vital stakeholders such as governments and small businesses often lag far behind technology-savvy NGOs. And then there’s the “what’s in it for me” mentality, held by fishing boat operators and other small business owners who view the use of scanning devices, RFID tags and other technology with suspicion. RFID tags are expensive, so costs will need to come down before the Provenance blockchain model can be scaled up.

Even if the blockchain ecosystem works by leveraging the latest in, for example, AI, digital platforms, data analytics, and satellite technology, there are those who worry about privacy. Putting the equivalent of a cattle-monitoring device on a human being to obtain work-related data seems downright dystopian.

Regardless, blockchain is the biggest technology disruption since the advent of the internet. It will transform global supply chains. Eventually, there will be nowhere to hide for fish poachers, human traffickers and unscrupulous middlemen.

Alex Capri is a senior fellow at the National University of Singapore, where he teaches in the business school and in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

I work with the world's thought leaders in business, public policy and civil society, in the areas of global value chains, sustainable capitalism and international trade. My focus is on disruptive technology and the digital economy. Before becoming an academic, I was a partner with KPMG, a global consultancy, as well as an international trade specialist with the United States Customs Service. I did my graduate studies at the London School of Economics.