Supermarkets must stop making us accomplices in the destruction of the ocean

As citizens, we refuse to be complicit in the massacre of marine life and the serious human rights violations committed to fill the shelves of our supermarkets.

Forced labour, physical and verbal violence, deprivation of freedom, destructive fishing methods, the carnage of marine animals, sharks, rays, turtles and coral reefs: this is what hides behind the canned tuna sold in supermarkets.

It’s unbearable and unacceptable.

Empty CSR* declarations and announcements have gone on for far too long. We want concrete measures and tangible results! (*corporate social responsibility)

A retailer like Carrefour, France’s leading supermarket chain and seventh worldwide, should have an exemplary fish offering, allowing consumers to buy tuna-based products without having to feel guilty for participating in industrial production chains that are both brutal for humans and environmentally destructive.

We categorically refuse to support human and environmental crimes via our purchases!

If Carrefour commits to adopting and implementing urgent measures to protect human rights and the health of the ocean, it can turn the tables on destructive industrial fisheries by setting an example of what a truly responsible multinational can do.

Let’s demand that Carrefour stop selling tuna from destructive fisheries and irresponsible processing chains

When we buy tuna in a Carrefour store, we shouldn’t be contributing to the destruction of the ocean and the disregard of human rights. And yet we are.

To fill their shelves with canned tuna, supermarkets rely on fisheries and industrial processing chains with anti-ecological and anti-social practices. Retailers deliberately turn a blind eye to the disastrous impact of the tropical tuna industry, fished in the distant waters of Africa and the Pacific.

Today, tropical tuna fishing is associated with intolerable human rights violations: forced labour, physical and verbal threats, sexual violence, debt bondage, withholding and non-payment of wages, dangerous, abusive and inhumane working conditions on fishing vessels, lack of health care, malnutrition, etc. The list is long and sordid. These widespread, serious and systematic violations of human rights are combined with fishing practices that destroy marine ecosystems, endangering the survival of the tropical tunas themselves… European industrial tuna boats put baby yellowfin tuna in cans, not even leaving them the time to reproduce!

European industrial fishers also use technological tools such as “FADs”, or fish aggregating devices, which are high-tech rafts that aggregate fish underneath them and cause a massacre of marine animals, including vulnerable species such as silky sharks and marine turtles, which are threatened with extinction. 60 to 90% of these floating rafts are then abandoned at sea, where they continue to trap marine life, devastate coral reefs and pollute the ocean.

Self-proclaimed “sustainable fishing” labels such as the MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) have notoriously deficient ecological and social standards, yet this is the type of tool that retailers mistakenly use to avoid taking responsibility.

It can’t go on.

We reject the cynicism and greed of retailers who choose to turn a blind eye to the intolerable brutality of the tuna supply chain and make us complicit in the horror.

Carrefour carries enormous weight: it is France’s leading supermarket chain and the 7th largest in the world. Carrefour has the power and the duty to demand virtuous practices from its suppliers. The 2017 French law on corporate duty of care requires it. Carrefour can and must set an example. By transforming its purchasing policies, Carrefour has the power to change the entire industrial tuna fishing sector.

LET’S ASK CARREFOUR TO TAKE URGENT MEASURES TO PUT AN END TO HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND THE MASSACRE OF THE OCEAN AND MARINE BIODIVERSITY

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The practices documented throughout the tuna value chain violate numerous international treaties ratified by France, as well as other international legal instruments to which Carrefour refers in its Vigilance Plan and which its entire supply chain should respect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Labour Organization’s Convention (No. 188) on work in fishing, and numerous UN conventions.

To see all our detailed demands that we are sending to Carrefour by way of legal notice, read here