The Certification and Ratings Collaboration is working in partnership with a human and labor rights-focused organization, Issara Institute, to help responsible seafood companies establish worker engagement systems.

This initiative will identify options for improving credible, ongoing worker engagement mechanisms, which include processes for grievance and remediation, in the seafood sectors of India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Outputs over the two year project will include:

1. A map of worker engagement mechanism options in seafood recruitment, fishing, farming, and processing in the project’s focus countries. If there are no applicable options, Issara will explore supporting building out the capacity of values-aligned NGOs or other local programs to establish credible worker feedback mechanisms. If neither of these existing options are available, Issara will make recommendations on next steps. This “landscape scan” will be released as a public document in 2025.
2. Issara Institute will conduct field interviews with seafood workers and stakeholders in the focus countries to assess the effectiveness of these mechanisms. The findings will highlight strengths, weaknesses, and barriers to accessibility and trust. Based on this analysis, Issara will provide recommendations and resources to improve support for seafood workers. This report will help inform reviews and any further development of Collaboration members’ social responsibility policies and practices, but it will also benefit wider standard systems, the seafood industry, and the philanthropic community.
3. The Collaboration will build on Issara’s report, conclusions and recommendations to produce unified guidance and/or recommendations for its members’ business partners, civil society groups, government, and the funding and development community.
4. The project partners will present the above reports and guidance/recommendations at at least one large international seafood event, such as the Global Seafood Expo, in 2026.
5. As appropriate to the nature of their programs, each Collaboration member will produce a summary of how it plans to use Issara’s recommendations to improve worker voice mechanisms by informing any future reviews of standards or tools, and/or work with business partners.

This project is possible thanks to a grant from the ISEAL Innovations Fund, which is supported by