A Decade of Enhancing Transparency in Thailand's Seafood Supply Chain - WWF - Apr '25
Our food systems are pushing the planet to its limits, while hundreds of millions go hungry and billions lack access to healthy diets. To sustain both people and the planet, a systems-wide transformation across land and sea is essential.
For the past decade, World Wildlife Fund has worked closely with the Seafood Task Force (STF) — the only global trade association uniting the world's largest retailers, seafood brands, and their partners — to enhance supply chain oversight and drive continuous improvement from vessel to plate. STF is the first pre-competitive seafood platform to institutionalize conversion-free shrimp, marking a major milestone in its journey.
Crises create opportunities for change
Mangroves are critical ecosystems, providing spawning and nursery grounds for aquatic species while acting as significant carbon sinks that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the 1980s and 1990s, the expansion of rice, fish, and shrimp farms significantly contributed to global mangrove loss. Shrimp farming, in particular, has been a major driver of coastal habitat conversion.
Some segments of the shrimp value chain have also cut corners on worker well-being to provide the lowest-cost products for international trade.
In 2015, these crises came to a head. Widespread human rights abuses, including forced and bonded labor, were exposed in the Thai shrimp feed and processing industries, while an outbreak of Early Mortality Syndrome wiped out half of the country’s shrimp production. Meanwhile, the European Union let the Generalized Scheme of Preference duty discounts expire, removing a key source of support for Thai shrimp farmers that had followed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
The industry struggled to recover from these setbacks.
As the environmental lead for a coalition of NGOs working with the Task Force, WWF collaborated to reduce risks in the industry across the supply chain — spanning from fishing vessels operating in Thai waters, through fishmeal and fish oil producers, feed manufacturers, shrimp farms, and processing facilities, to exporters, importers, international brands, retailers, and ultimately consumers in the United States — to help boost oversight of both environmental and social impacts.
Advancing traceability and habitat protection
WWF’s initial engagement with STF focused on achieving traceable supply chains — an industry-wide effort involving businesses, labor and human rights organizations, and environmental NGOs. However, as we moved closer to the source of production, tracking and tracing documentation became increasingly complex and challenging.
To address this, WWF hired Deloitte to analyze electronic traceability options, assessing whether STF would be better served by partnering with existing vendors or developing its own system. While the Task Force initially developed its own traceability system for Thailand, this effort became redundant when the Thai Department of Fisheries transitioned its paper-based tracking system for shrimp to an electronic platform — one of many STF-related initiatives the Moore Foundation supported.
As traceability improved and aided by Clark University’s geospatial mapping tool, STF became more effective at identifying areas of habitat conversion. This tool helps the government and STF de-risk regions where no conversion has occurred, allowing farms in those areas to bypass individual habitat conversion assessments. It exemplified the enhanced scale of environmental oversight achieved through the efforts of the Task Force.
Lessons from a decade of pre-competitive collaboration
Over time, everyone involved has played a part in showing how valuable it is when different parts of the supply chain work together. Their combined actions have demonstrated that collaboration leads to better outcomes — by working with influential actors, including companies like Costco and Walmart, as well as farmers, fishermen, governments, and NGOs, STF has secured commitments from most members to uphold a social code. An environmental code is in development, with pilot programs already underway across dozens of supply chains.
With a shared problem-solving spirit, this collective approach has driven essential systemic change. And what was once hidden was owned and became a catalyst for change.
At WWF, we have learned the following lessons:
- Building systems and processes that align with downstream buyers’ needs while engaging upstream partners is the most effective way to drive sustainable, long-term impacts and systems change.
- There is no distinction between traceable and fully traceable — a product is either traceable or it isn’t. STF has successfully established a traceable system. However, a product can be traceable about where it was produced and still not be transparent about how it was produced.
- Key companies, organizations, and individuals drive the success of these initiatives. They shoulder 80% of the work and create a safe space for others to join. However, they are only as effective as CEOs and senior management allows.
- Retailers need to show up where the problems are happening and continue engaging, or the spirit fades and the effort dissolves over time.
As STF moves forward, it will face growing challenges: resource scarcity, intensified weather-related shocks, migration (people, fisheries, and production), and increasing competition for seafood products. There is no single solution to address these issues. But building on a decade of experience, STF is now expanding its work to new regions. It is deepening its focus on commodities like tuna, which has yet to achieve the same level of progress seen in Thailand’s shrimp supply chain.
The systemic change our food systems needs is already underway.
Jason Clay - Executive Director WWF - Markets initiative