After enduring substantial pressure to clean up their supply chains, pet food giants Mars and Nestlé have pledged to eliminate human rights abuses and illegally procured materials from their supply chains. Find out how this issue came to light and how Mars and Nestlé have committed to a cleaner pet food supply chain.
Situation: Greenpeace Launches Campaign Against Mars and Nestlé
For global companies like Mars and Nestlé, bad press can cause significant damage to the brand’s reputation. That’s why Greenpeace’s 2016 campaign, Cats vs. Bad Tuna, garnered immediate attention from the pet food giants. This innovative campaign used the popularity of online cat videos and memes to raise awareness of the companies’ problematic seafood sourcing methods and to lead the charge toward change.
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While the campaign relied on humorous images to attract attention, the issue that Greenpeace outlined was completely serious. The environmental organization asserted that Nestlé, Mars, and other major companies had an unnecessarily high risk of illegally caught seafood in their pet food supply chains. Greenpeace’s groundbreaking 2016 report, Turn the Tide, provided plenty of data on the rise of transshipments in Southeast Asia.
This unregulated practice enables fishermen to shift their catches from one vessel to another, which then allows the original vessel to remain at sea for much longer than usual, sometimes for years at a time. Vessels that rarely return to port have a much easier time of concealing human rights abuses, such as employing underage workers, enforcing unreasonably long working hours, and cutting off contact between workers and the outside world.
Approach: Mars and Nestlé Eliminate Transshipments From Pet Food Supply Chains
Though Nestlé had already been investigating potential human rights issues in its supply chain since at least 2014, the Cats vs. Bad Tuna campaign prompted additional action. Immediately after the campaign launched, Nestlé and Mars confirmed their plans to address the problem.
In early 2017, both Mars and Nestlé pledged to eliminate transshipments from their supply chains. While Nestlé has committed to a complete ban on the practice, Mars has pledged to suspend products that incorporate transshipments if suppliers can’t effectively address the related human rights issues.
Impact and Advantage
Both Mars and Nestlé have long sourced the majority of their seafood from Thai Union, one of the biggest seafood suppliers in the world. This new spotlight on transshipments will force Thai Union to address this and other illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices immediately.
Indeed, in July 2017, Thai Union pledged large-scale changes to its business practices. The company’s commitment to ban transshipment, develop a code of conduct for vessels, and make other sustainability improvements are likely to affect seafood supply chains in a positive way. Since Thai Union’s customers include more than just pet food producers, these practices may also affect the food that people consume around the world.
Though this story is still unfolding, current developments indicate that Mars’ and Nestlé’s stances on responsible fishing methods will have a widespread impact on the seafood supply chain. Due to the extensive reach of supplier Thai Union, these substantial changes to seafood sourcing methods will affect supply chains around the globe.[/show_to]
