CP Foods plans to expand IFFO-certified tuna meal model with Kingfisher to other plants Thai agribusiness group Charoen Pokphand Foods plans to expand the supply partnership it has with Kingfisher Holdings for certified fishmeal from tuna by-products to as many as ten other plants, as well as improving the fisheries it came under fire for sourcing from in an article by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. The Bangkok-based company, which took a hit from the Guardian article alleging some vessels supplying the fishmeal plants it sourced from for shrimp feed are using slave labor, is in the middle of a major overhaul of its feed supply chain. Not only is CP Foods looking to get more fishmeal producers to follow Kingfisher’s lead and get certified to the IFFO RS standard, Thai companies and the Thai military government are working to eliminate slave labor and overfishing from the mixed species trawl fisheries which the Guardian flagged up. “It’s a new model for the fishmeal industry in Thailand,” Pitipong Dejjarukul, an assistant vice-president with CP Foods, told Undercurrent News. “We plan to expand the model in this factory with Kingfisher and also to other factories in Thailand. There are ten factories we have identified as being suitable for this, “ he said. “In the next one or two months, we hope to have another memorandum of understanding announced with another plant.” Expanding the volumes from Kingfisher, the tuna and shrimp processor owned by Japan’s Maruha Nichiro, is also a short-term focus. In July, CP Foods received the IFFO RS chain of custody standard, one of only two feedmills in Asia to have it. For fishmeal, Kingfisher’s Southeast Asian Packaging & Canning Ltd (SEAPAC) factory is the only site in Asia to be audited and compliant against the RS standard for meal and fish oil derived from tuna by-products. At the moment, only one of the two lines in the SEAPAC factory is IFFO RS certified, said Rawadee Piyakaiwan, the general manager for Kingfisher. “The second line will be submitted and audited for the IFFO certificate before this year end,” she told Undercurrent. Before this, Kingfisher hopes to be able to up volumes from the one line by submitting a document to extend toe scope of where it can source the tuna used in the certified fishmeal from. “Now, we can produce only 12-16 metric tons per day of IFFO RS fishmeal from about 45-55t of tuna scraps,” she said. “To increase the quantity of IFFO fishmeal, we already submitted the document to extend our scope, then tuna scraps will be more available, not just only catching zone FAO 71. The third party auditor will come to audit us around end of this month or early October, at the latest,” she said. “So, this means that we can increase IFFO RS fishmeal production to 22t of fishmeal a day from 80t of tuna scraps.” The additional catching areas Kingfisher plans to extend to are FAO 51, 57, and 61. “After the catching zone extension, then we will submit to certify for the other fishmeal line within this year,” Piyakaiwan told Undercurrent. “Then, we can increase IFFO RS fishmeal up to 34 tons/day from scrap 120 tons/day. Our machine capacity can be up to 200t of tuna scraps/day, if raw material is available,” she said. In 2014, with shrimp production set to hit an all time low of under 200,000t, compared to 250,000t last year and 640,000t in 2010, demand for feed is much lower. So, CP Foods plans for tuna by-products to make up 18% of its needs this year, going to 23% in 2015, 29% in 2016 and down to 24% in 2017. The company plans for surimi by products to make up 35% in 2014, 40% in 2015, 41% in 2016 and 42% in 2017. By-catch from Thai fisheries is modeled to make up 47% in 2014, 37% in 2015, 30% in 2016 and 34% in 2017. “When shrimp production was 500-600,00t, the total shrimp feed demand was 125,000t. Demand is down to 40% of this, so around 40-50,000t,” said Dejjarukul. “We could import all the fishmeal from Peru, but that would not help the business in Thailand at all. How can the Thai fishmeal industry survive if we do that?” The volume of fishmeal produced in Thailand, around 500,000t, “could easily just be exported to China, where they do not care about the ethical conduct of the fishery”, he told Undercurrent. “Our plan is to positively motivate the local fisheries to improve how they operate.” At the moment, only fishmeal produced from tuna by-products is eligible to be IFFO RS certified, so there is a lot of work underway and to be done on the by-catch fisheries and surimi by-product feed. Extending non-IUU scheme to labor audit Before the Guardian story broke, resulting in a furor that caused retailers such as Whole Foods and Carrefour to, temporarily at least, turn their back in CP Foods, the company had already been paying a premium to suppliers who could prove they were buying from vessels taking part in the Thai Department of Fisheries’ non- illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishmeal traceability scheme. This was done after “Fish Fight”, a program hosted by UK celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, attacked CP Foods for sourcing from unsustainable trash fish fisheries. The focus of the program, aired in 2013. In 2013, the company sourced 55,715t of fishmeal produced from by-catch from Thai fisheries, with 16,059t coming from fish caught by vessels that were registered to the scheme, which is 29%. In order to incentivize suppliers to do this, CP Foods paid a premium of THB 48.2 million. From January to May in 2014, after which the company stopped buying any fishmeal at all from local fisheries as the media storm around the Guardian story hit, CP Foods had bought 27,478t of fishmeal, with 18,083t coming from registered vessels, which is 66%. The company had paid THB 54.2m as a premium for this. After the article from the Guardian, CP Foods placed a moratorium on purchasing all goods or products suspected of involvement in human trafficking, child labor and forced labor. This meant the company totally stopped buying any fishmeal produced using by-catch from the Thai fisheries. The company has since been though a series of measures, before starting to buy again from fishmeal produced from Thai-caught fish at the start of August. Firstly, the company reviewed the full ‘black list’ published by Department of Special Investigation for companies and vessels with a record of being convicted of involvement in human trafficking. Fishmeal will now only be purchased by CP Foods from sources fully traceable right back to the raw materials’ origins, according to its new policy. The company has since put in place a policy that it will only buy fishmeal from vessels not engaging in non-IUU or from vessels or fishmeal factories suspected of involvement in human trafficking, forced labor and slavery. As a condition of purchase, all CP Foods fishmeal suppliers must now identify full names and addresses of all fishing vessels or other suppliers before a supply contract is awarded. In addition to having to provide vessel registration and fishing license to prove no IUU is going on and provide full names and addresses of all fishing vessels, they have to receive an audit by officers of the Thai ministry of labor. As well as this, all fishing vessels have to report traffic, both the arrival and departure time from the port, along with the name and number of crewmen, along with a photo. The photo is retaken on coming back in port, to stop the possibility of deaths or swaps of crewmen at sea. This is then submitted with the port-in, port out document. The next stage is to build on this grounding and get more fishmeal factories into the “IFFO RS Improver’s Program”. This means the supplier must have done an analysis study identifying where the factory and its raw material fail to meet the RS standard and put in place an action plan which identifies how shortcomings will be addressed; who is responsible for their completion; and in what timescale. For the fishmeal sourced from by-catch from the Thai fisheries and from surimi by-products, for which much of the raw material is sourced from same fisheries, a Fishery Improvement Partnership (FIP) is needed to meet this standard. The Thai Sustainable Fisheries Roundtable (TSFR) has financed consultancy on FIPs in in the Gulf of Thailand, with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and in the Andaman Sea, with WWF. TSFR has financed the $25,000 and $19,000, respectively, for the consultancy on the two FIPs. Between $100-150m will be required for the full implementation, which will be financed by the government, NGOs and retailers, CP Foods states. By January 2015, fishmeal producers will have to receive a follow up audit from one done in September 2014 by the Ministry of Labor and then apply for a Thai Labor Standard (TLS) 8001, which they will be audited for. TLS 8001 is a standard introduced by the Ministry of Labor in 2006. The standards consist of 12 categories: 1) general rules, 2) management system, 3) forced labor, 4) remuneration, 5) working hours, 6) discrimination in the workplace, 7) discipline, 8) child labor, 9) female labor, 10) freedom of association and collective bargaining, 11) health and safety in the workplace, and 12) workers’ welfare. Fishing vessel owners will also receive a follow up audit by the ministry, to ensure they have workers with employment contracts and payroll accounts. Fishing vessels doing trips over 60 days must have VMS — a vessel monitoring system — installed. undercurrentnews/2014/09/25/cp-foods-plans-to-expand-iffo-certified-tuna-meal-model-with-kingfisher-to-other-plants/
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 07:12:58 +0000
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