Greenpeace has warned that Australia’s weak labelling laws may be allowing the sale of seafood from environmentally destructive and unethical fishing fleets in south-east Asia.

The group has released the results of a 12-month investigation of Thailand’s ghost fishing fleet, a collection of refrigerated vessels, or reefers, notorious for causing damage to fragile ecosystems and subjecting vulnerable migrant labour to slave-like conditions.

Greenpeace’s investigation relied on undercover operations, positioning data and interviews with survivors to track the rogue fishing fleet as it fled government crackdowns in Indonesia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea last year.

The group found that the fleet had been engaged in a “fishing frenzy”, escaping scrutiny by moving to remote and unregulated areas of the Indian Ocean.

Crews continued to be kept in slave-like conditions, similar to those previously revealed by the Guardian in a number of investigations over the past two years. Workers were kept on debt bondage, beaten severely and allowed to die from diseases that were largely wiped out in the 19th century.

Greenpeace also tracked the seafood hauls caught by the vessels, finding they had made their way into the supply chains of companies involved in global export, including in cat food products sold by Nestle.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific oceans campaigner Nathaniel Pelle said Australia’s weak labelling laws potentially allowed for such products to be disguised and sold locally.



Current labelling laws make it difficult for consumers to distinguish where seafood products have come from, or precisely what type of fish they are buying, despite more than 70% coming from imports.

It makes it near-impossible for Australians to tell if they are buying sustainable or ethical products, Pelle said: “It’d be difficult in Australia to be certain of where seafood is coming from, or even what type of fish it is.”

“People can label things just as fish, or as white fish. White fish isn’t actually a type of fish … so it’s not very useful information,” Pelle said.

“And the laws are even worse in food service, so if you’re going to a restaurant or getting takeaway, it’s very difficult to know where the fish has come from.”



Greenpeace, along with 16 environment organisations and Australian seafood industry bodies last year called on the federal government to strengthen labelling laws. They favour a European Union-style scheme forcing food suppliers to tell consumers what type of fish is in their product, where it came from, and how it was caught and farmed.

The chance to strengthen labelling laws came before parliament in August last year when senator Nick Xenophon and Greens senator Peter Wish Wilson brought a bill to the upper house with cross-bench support. It was voted down by Labor and the Coalition.

But as demand for seafood products peaks ahead of Christmas, Pelle has reiterated calls for the federal government to reform labelling laws. Until then, he urged consumers to buy local products. Pelle said tiger prawns from Australia, rather than south-east Asia, were preferable.

Produce from the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney and Moreton Bay in Queensland was sustainable, as were Spencer Gulf prawns from Port Lincoln in South Australia.

“There’s good stuff around,” Pelle said. “Try and choose something local, and make sure the person who is selling it to you can tell you a bit about how it got from the ocean onto your plate,” he said.

International bodies exist to certify sustainable seafood, including the Marine Stewardship Council. The council certifies products available in Australia, including in Coles, and allows compliant suppliers to use their blue MSC tick as a sign of sustainability. It certifies fisheries as sustainable, and uses DNA testing and other traceability measures to ensure products are labelled accurately.

The council’s Oceania program director, Anne Gabriel, told Guardian Australia that consumers played a vital role in boosting demand for sustainable products.

“Consumers play an important role in ensuring that by demanding for sustainable seafood, more and more brands, restaurants, retailers and processors will choose MSC-certified seafood, and in return encourage more fisheries to meet the standard required to be certified as sustainable,” Gabriel said.

“They are a part of a virtuous circle that’s helping to protect the functioning and productivity and health of our oceans, and the livelihoods that depend upon them,” she said.



But Pelle is sceptical of the strength of third party certification. He said the MSC was good at ensuring that labels accurately reflected the contents of the product. But he said they gave some fisheries too much leeway. He said in some cases fisheries that simply promised to become sustainable were allowed to use MSC’s tick.

“We think putting a sustainable tick on a fishery that is not yet sustainable is pretty irresponsible,” he said.