I’m contacting you in light of our latest investigation which concerns the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry, and a link we’ve discovered between companies engaged in such practices and your supply chain. Brødrene Sperre has sent fish to be processed at three plants run by the Shandong Meijia Group, and one (Rizhao Rirong Aquatic Products) under the Rongsense Group.
The Meijia Group and the Rongsense Group have each received persons from the Xinjiang region of China under a state-imposed labor transfer program since at least 2019 and 2017, respectively, and as recentl…
The companies you mention are not in our supply chain. The raw material for our fish processing factories in Norway comes from MSC approved fisheries, mainly conducted by Norwegian boats. We produce and export seafood to numerous countries and companies all over the world. We do not own factories abroad, and we do net rent factories or production facilities / capacity in countries outside Norway. Once we have sold our products, we have very limited possibilities to track the goods, and to effect how and where the buyer disposes of the goods.
Thank you very much for replying so quickly to our query and for your very thorough response.
We certainly appreciate that once a company sells its product to a customer, that it then has very limited insight on what happens next to that product and where it goes. Given the issues raised in our previous email, do you have any concerns about materials from Brødrene Sperre going into factories where they may be processed in forced labor conditions?