I’m contacting you in light of our latest investigation which concerns the use of forced labor in China’s food processing industry, and a link we’ve discovered between a company engaged in such practices and a supplier in Young’s supply chain - Qingdao Tianyuan Aquatic, based in China. Unibond Seafood International supplies fish products to Young’s Seafood. Unibond has imported shipments of cod and pollock from Qingdao Tianyuan Aquatic Foodstuffs Co. Ltd.
Qingdao Tianyuan has received persons transferred from the Xinjiang region of China under a state-imposed forced labor transfer program sin…
Thanks for your email. I will get in touch with the team at Young’s about this and come back to you with a response. Can I ask the reason for the deadline of the 4th August? If an investigation needs to take place it will take some time.
Thanks for your email. We have to move ahead with the story and can’t hold it indefinitely, hence the deadline.
Thanks for getting back to me and for the additional information. If you’ve got any further background that would be really helpful so we can try and sort out a response for you. Have you contacted any other organisations about this? Where are you looking to publish this – is it on The Outlaw Ocean Project website or another publication?
Young’s Seafood Limited take any allegations of forced or illegal labour within our supply chain extremely seriously. We are currently undertaking our own investigation. We are active members of the Seafood Ethics Action Alliance (SEA Alliance), a collaboration of retailers and seafood businesses which aims to strengthen human rights due diligence in the global seafood supply chain and ensure respect for human rights. Through this, we are involved in a range of activities which seek to improve labour standards in the seafood sector. These include ensuring effective due diligence and effective…
Thanks so much for getting that statement out to us so quickly. Could Young’s give us a sense of the time needed to conduct an internal investigation, and when we will be updated on the findings? I’m sure Young’s can appreciate that, given the role the company plays in UK frozen food supply chains, there is keen public interest in your response to our findings, especially as they relate to the public procurement we asked about in our previous email. We also have two follow-up questions in relation to Young’s supply chain investigation:
- Can Young’s confirm if white fish, including pollock an…
As I mentioned last week, Young’s has started an investigation into this matter. I’m sure you are aware, with your extensive experience in this area, the level of complexity involved in this type of investigation when the processing facility in question is in China. Young’s is in the process of talking to suppliers to find out further information in order to verify the claims you have made to us. However, if you can share any information or evidence behind the claims that would help greatly in expediting the process. Can you provide any further evidence or information that could assist us in o…
We were under the impression that one of the benefits of MSC Chain of Custody certification is that traceability to processing facilities is relatively straightforward in circumstances such as these. Have we misunderstood the effectiveness of MSC Chain of Custody certification in offering traceability of raw material to source? In terms of further information, unfortunately we're not in a position to disclose details about our methods or provide evidence to companies at this time. What I can confirm is that our evidence of Uyghur forced labor at Qingdao Tianyuan Aquatic Foodstuffs in the perio…
I think you may have misunderstood - my point around the complexity was around the evidence of forced labour, not around the supply. Thank you for the additional information you have sent over though. What you have provided is a good start, but the sharing of the evidence you have mentioned - not just the methods you have used - would be hugely helpful in assisting with our investigations.
I did indeed misunderstand you there, my apologies and thanks for the clarification. We've provided as much as we can at present without jeopardizing the sources of the information. At this stage, it would also be unfair to provide Young's with evidence that we have denied other implicated companies access to. The methodological pointers and summary of findings we've already provided are quite specific and should be enough for you to proceed. We look forward to your reply, and I'm available in the meantime to answer any additional questions you may have.
Young’s Seafood Limited take any allegations of forced or illegal labour within our supply chain extremely seriously and have started an investigation into this matter. “We appreciate that it is not possible for The Outlaw Ocean Project to share their evidence with us at this time, and we await the publishing of their report, which will aid us in our further investigations. We will provide further updates in due course as this develops. We are continuing to work alongside Seafood Ethics Action Alliance, Food Network for Ethical Trade (FNET) and the wider industry to address this very important…
Thanks for your email. I am just writing to confirm with you that we have received the response from Young's Seafood. One note: we do not anonymize spokespeople as a matter of course. So any attribution will name the relevant spokesperson.
Thanks for getting back to me. Can we ask who you are intending to attribute the quote to? Just so you’re aware, as we are external consultants we are not spokespeople for the business.
We will need to attribute to you if you are serving as a consultant for the company in replying to our media queries. If you’d like your client to provide you with an alternate name so we that we do not have to attribute to this email and its sender then please ask your client and we can use an alternate name.
To reiterate, categorically I am not a spokesperson for Young’s and I cannot speak on behalf of the business. It would be factually incorrect to quote me as a spokesperson. We will put your question to the team at Young’s but it is at their discretion on whether they choose to name someone, as is normal and professional media protocol.
I'm following up on our email of August 1, 2023, to let you know that our investigation continues to surface questions in relation to your client's supply chain. Further to our enquiry about UK primary schools, our research shows that Young's is an important supplier to the UK healthcare and (primary, secondary and higher) education sectors. Can Young's confirm whether any seafood sourced from Qingdao Tianyuan has been supplied by Young's brands to UK healthcare or education facilities since 2018? Can Young's confirm it is confident that no seafood produced through Xinjiang forced labor has be…
Young’s Seafood Limited take any allegations of forced or illegal labour within our supply chain extremely seriously and therefore we are independently following up and conducting an investigation into this matter.
In addition to our own investigations, we continue to work alongside Seafood Ethics Action Alliance, Food Network for Ethical Trade (FNET) and the wider industry to be vigilant on this very important issue, which affects not just the seafood industry, but all areas of manufacturing.
Any evidence that The Outlaw Ocean Project can share that would aid our own investigation will be…
A coalition of eighteen NGOs wrote to thirteen major seafood distributors and retailers, including Young's Seafood, asking a series of questions connected to the Outlaw Ocean's reporting. Their email to Young's Seafood said: "Dear Young's Seafood,
We are writing to you on behalf of a consortium of human rights NGOs requesting an update on the steps Young's Seafood has taken following the investigation published by The Outlaw Ocean Project. The investigation highlighted concerns about state-imposed Uyghur and North Korean forced labor across the Chinese seafood processing facilities, including…
We previously emailed you on August 30, 2023, regarding our investigation into the use of forced labor in China’s seafood processing industry. Our ongoing investigation has found additional evidence which we wanted to bring to Young’s Seafood. We have investigators on the ground in China who have been engaging with labor brokers directly involved with the transfer of North Korean workers to factories in China. Through this and other investigative means, including collecting online footage from the plants and interviews with workers recently returned to North Korea from China, we’ve found large…