Exploring shared infrastructure to strengthen labor systems across seafood supply chains
Over the past two decades, seafood supply chains have made significant progress in strengthening environmental sustainability. Certification programs, fishery improvement projects, and shared transparency tools have helped establish common frameworks for improving both fisheries and aquaculture management and aligning incentives across global supply chains.
At the same time, expectations around responsible sourcing have expanded. Buyers, suppliers, and employers increasingly recognize that responsible seafood production must also address how workers are recruited, paid, supervised, and supported throughout the supply chain.
Seafood LAB is being explored as a potential way to address that gap!
Seafood LAB is envisioned as shared supply-chain infrastructure that enables buyers, suppliers, and employers to engage in structured processes for assessing and strengthening labor-management systems. Participation in these processes would become visible within commercial relationships, allowing companies to signal their engagement in improving workplace systems across supply chains. Seafood LAB explores whether a similar form of infrastructure could help expand engagement in strengthening labor-management systems across seafood supply chains.
As expectations around responsible sourcing evolve, seafood companies are increasingly asked not only to identify potential labor risks, but also to demonstrate how those risks are being addressed in practice. Across the sector, many actors are already working to strengthen recruitment practices, wage systems, worker engagement, and other workplace management processes. However, these efforts often remain difficult to see across supply chains.
Seafood LAB is being explored as shared infrastructure that could help address this challenge. The concept focuses on strengthening the labor-management systems that shape working conditions and making engagement in those improvement processes visible within commercial relationships. The questions below explain the concept and how it might function if developed.
Seafood LAB is a proposed piece of shared infrastructure designed to support labor and human-rights due diligence across seafood supply chains.
Rather than functioning as another certification program, audit tool, or standalone labor initiative, Seafood LAB focuses on strengthening the labor-management systems that shape working conditions in practice. These include the recruitment practices, wage and remittance systems, supervision structures, and grievance mechanisms through which workers experience employment on vessels, aquaculture farms, and in processing facilities.
The concept draws inspiration from the LAB architecture developed by the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and implemented in produce supply chains through ECIP LAB. That model demonstrated how engagement in strengthening labor systems can be structured across buyers, suppliers, and producers within commercial relationships. Seafood LAB is being explored as a sector-specific adaptation of this architecture for seafood supply chains.
In this context, LAB—Learn, Assess, Benchmark—refers to a process through which companies learn about their labor-management systems, assess how those systems function in practice, and benchmark progress over time.
By making engagement in strengthening workplace systems visible within supply chains, Seafood LAB aims to create clearer signals about which actors are actively investing in responsible labor practices and how those systems are evolving over time.
The concept is designed to operate across seafood supply chains, including wild capture fisheries, aquaculture operations, and processing facilities.
Seafood LAB does not yet exist. The concept is currently being explored through consultation with industry stakeholders and partners to determine whether this type of infrastructure would be valuable for the sector and how it should be designed.
Responsible sourcing in seafood has advanced significantly over the past two decades, particularly through environmental initiatives such as certification, ratings programs, and fishery improvement projects.
At the same time, expectations around labor and human rights in supply chains have grown rapidly. Companies are increasingly asked not only to identify potential labor risks, but also to demonstrate how those risks are being addressed.
Across the sector, many companies and partners are already working to strengthen labor practices. However, these efforts often remain difficult to see across supply chains. Employers may improve recruitment or wage systems, suppliers may coordinate responsible sourcing expectations across networks of producers, and buyers may set policies and standards for their sourcing partners—but there are few shared mechanisms for making that progress visible across the relationships that connect them.
Seafood LAB is being explored as infrastructure that could help close this gap by creating structured visibility around how companies are engaging in strengthening the labor systems that shape working conditions.
Labor conditions in seafood are shaped largely by how workplaces are managed.
Recruitment intermediaries, employment arrangements, wage and remittance systems, supervision practices, and grievance mechanisms all influence what workers experience in practice. These systems sit at the level of individual employers and operators.
Many companies are already working to strengthen these systems. However, improvements often remain difficult to see across supply chains. Buyers may have limited visibility into how suppliers and employers are managing labor systems in practice, while suppliers and employers may have few ways to demonstrate the progress they are making.
Seafood LAB is being explored as infrastructure that could enable companies to engage in structured improvement processes and signal that engagement across commercial relationships.
If developed, Seafood LAB would operate through existing commercial relationships within seafood supply chains.
Buyers could invite suppliers to participate in the platform. Suppliers would then identify the employers within their sourcing networks—such as vessels, aquaculture farms, or processing facilities. Each participating company would engage in assessing and strengthening the labor-management systems through which workers are recruited, paid, supervised, and able to raise concerns.
The platform would make engagement in these improvement processes visible across the supply chain. Buyers could see which suppliers and employers are actively working to strengthen labor systems, while suppliers and employers could demonstrate their engagement across multiple commercial partners.
Participation in Seafood LAB is organized around the LAB process—Learn, Assess, Benchmark—which provides companies with a structured way to examine and strengthen the labor-management systems that shape working conditions in practice.
Because seafood supply chains involve multiple actors, each user group interacts with the platform differently. The LAB experience is tailored to the role a company plays within the supply chain.
Employers and producers—such as vessel owners, aquaculture farms, or processing facilities—focus on examining and strengthening their own labor-management systems. Within the platform, they would complete structured assessments designed to help them evaluate how key systems operate in practice, including recruitment channels, employment arrangements, wage and remittance systems, supervision practices, and grievance mechanisms.
Alongside the assessment tool, employers would have access to a Learn channel containing modules, templates, and practical tools that help companies strengthen these systems over time. The goal is not simply to assess conditions, but to support companies in improving the systems that shape worker outcomes.
Suppliers and mid-chain companies would use the platform to map the employers within their sourcing networks and gain visibility into engagement across those operations. This allows suppliers to better understand how labor-management systems are functioning across their supply base and to support improvement efforts where needed.
Buyers interact with the platform in two ways. First, they make commitments related to responsible sourcing and map the suppliers within their purchasing networks. Second, they gain visibility into engagement across those supply chains through a dashboard that shows how suppliers and employers are participating in the LAB process.
Buyers also have access to their own LAB environment, focused on areas where purchasing practices influence working conditions, such as supplier engagement and responsible procurement approaches.
By structuring participation in this way, Seafood LAB connects improvement efforts at the employer level with visibility and incentives across the broader supply chain.
No. Seafood LAB is not intended to replace certification programs, worker-engagement initiatives, or other labor interventions.
Many existing programs provide deep expertise and accountability in specific areas of labor practice. Seafood LAB is designed to complement these efforts by creating infrastructure that allows engagement in improvement processes to become visible across supply chains.
Where companies are already participating in credible programs or partnerships, the platform is designed to recognize that engagement rather than requiring companies to duplicate those efforts.
In the produce sector, for example, ECIP LAB recognizes certain programs that the industry and participating stakeholders have agreed represent credible labor engagement. Companies participating in those programs receive a “gold star” designation within the platform. This recognition places them at the highest engagement tier, provides visibility to buyers, and removes the need to accumulate additional LAB engagement indicators. It also grants companies free access to the platform.
How recognition might work in seafood remains an open design question. Determining which certifications, programs, or partnerships qualify for formal recognition would not be left to the judgment of any single organization. Instead, those decisions would be made collaboratively with industry participants and relevant stakeholders to ensure that recognition reflects credible engagement across the sector.
The intent is to ensure that Seafood LAB functions as connective infrastructure across existing efforts rather than introducing a competing program.
No. Participation in Seafood LAB would not indicate that a company has no labor risks or that it complies with all labor standards.
Instead, the platform is designed to signal engagement in improvement processes. A participating company is demonstrating that it is actively examining and strengthening the systems through which workers are recruited, managed, and paid.
Engagement signals therefore indicate participation in improvement efforts rather than certification status or compliance outcomes.
Seafood LAB is not intended to function as a compliance program or enforcement mechanism.
Instead, it is designed to help structure engagement in strengthening labor-management systems and make that engagement visible across supply chains. Participation would typically be driven through commercial relationships rather than regulatory requirements.
For suppliers currently responding to multiple responsible sourcing requests, a shared framework could potentially provide a more structured way to demonstrate engagement across customers.
Seafood LAB is not intended to function as a regulatory reporting tool or legal compliance system.
However, the platform could support companies’ human-rights due-diligence processes by helping structure supplier engagement, document improvement actions, and create visibility into how labor-management systems are evolving across supply chains.
These functions align with key elements of due diligence, including identifying risks, supporting mitigation efforts, and monitoring progress over time.
Seafood LAB is envisioned as a private, role-based platform where information flows through supply-chain relationships rather than being publicly disclosed.
Companies would retain control over their own engagement data, and visibility would be limited to invited partners according to defined permissions. Buyers could see engagement across their supply networks, suppliers could see engagement across their own sourcing base, and employers would primarily see their own assessments and improvement pathways.
Detailed data governance arrangements would be determined during the platform design process.
Seafood LAB is currently in an exploration and consultation phase.
Industry stakeholders, technical experts, and existing initiatives are being consulted to determine whether this type of infrastructure would be valuable to the seafood sector and how it should be designed.
If sufficient interest emerges through this consultation process, the next step could involve developing a prototype platform and testing the model with a small group of participating supply chains before considering broader implementation.
Funding models have not yet been determined. Several approaches are possible, including buyer-funded models, shared subscription models across supply-chain tiers, or hybrid approaches supported by philanthropic or public-good funding.
One design principle under consideration is minimizing financial barriers for employers and producers, particularly in contexts where margins are tight and operational capacity is limited.
Seafood LAB participation would be driven through commercial relationships rather than mandatory enrollment.
Buyers may choose to encourage participation as part of their responsible sourcing strategies, but Seafood LAB itself would not enforce participation requirements or exclusion decisions.