Labour policy review

The MSC shares the increasing concerns surrounding labour abuses in the seafood industry and has a Social Policy team dedicated to working on our policy on these issues.

Our Labour Policy Review is currently undertaking work researching proposals on grievance mechanisms and human rights policy.  We will consult and engage stakeholders on all our work, full details of which are set out in Labour Policy Review Terms of Reference. 

New program document

As part of the Labour Policy Review, we have published a new scheme document, the MSC Labour Eligibility Requirements version 1.0, which brings together all of the labour requirements across our fishery and chain of custody programs.  

In addition to consolidating all previous requirements across the fishery and chain of custody standards and all relevant derogations, the new scheme document includes an extension of our chain of custody labour requirements to certificate holders with packing, processing and manual offload in all countries.

Stakeholder consultation

In early 2022, stakeholders were invited to provide feedback on the proposal for third-party audits and self-assessments for Chain of Custody certificate holders via our online survey.

All feedback received through the survey has been compiled in the summary report below. The report contains background information on the topics consulted on, participation data and anonymised feedback tables.

Feedback from the public review has been analysed and incorporated into our proposals where appropriate.  

Read the summary report from our Labour Policy Consultation.