Hidden in plain sight

Abstract

Food Science and TechnologyVolume 34, Issue 1 p. 44-47 FeaturesFree Access Hidden in plain sight First published: 05 March 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/fsat.3401_12.xAboutSectionsPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Rick Sanderson of Gate to Plate Compliance asks should modern slavery be the price we pay for ‘affordable’ food? He reviews the performance of British food and beverage companies at meeting the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act. In October 2015 the Modern Slavery Act was passed, the first of its kind in Europe and one of the first in the world to specifically address slavery and trafficking in the 21st century. The new legislation enhanced support and protection for victims and gave law enforcement the tools they need to target today's slave drivers and ensure perpetrators can be severely punished. Crucially it included provision to encourage businesses to take action to ensure their end-to-end supply chains are slavery free. The legislation initially only applies to those companies headquartered in the UK with a turnover in excess of £36m. This threshold was chosen as an assessment of those businesses with enough significance of spend to influence their supply chain and the ability to cascade the intentions of the Act. As a bare minimum, the Act requires companies to produce a statement of how they are ensuring that their supply chain is slavery free. 4 years on In May 2019, The Sunday Times reported that the Government itself spends over £3bn per annum on ‘companies that flout the Modern Slavery Act’. Moreover, ‘a third of its top 100 suppliers fail to meet minimum legal standards on combating human trafficking’, according to the data firm Tussell and ethics consultancy Sancroft. In July 2019, The Sunday Times again exposed a harrowing case of modern slavery in our fresh produce supply chains, with 400 Eastern European workers living in squalor and being paid a pittance, with threats of violence and servitude, to pick mushrooms, spring onions and celery for supermarkets. In November 2019, 39 Vietnamese nationals were found dead in a chilled container in Essex, subjects of human trafficking using food industry logistics networks to reach the UK, who died in their efforts to better their lives. This was no one-off and proven to be part of an international network of industrialised people smuggling. Despite this backdrop, in January 2020, according to the independent register TISC (Transparency in Supply Chains) Platform report1, there are still 3,578 companies, just over 20% of those required to comply with the Act, which have yet to produce a statement. This mirrors Gate to Plate Compliance's research into the food and beverage sector, with over 8% of the Top 200 companies by turnover not having produced a statement. The evidence speaks for itself. We are not taking this issue seriously enough and our approach is one of minimal compliance and tick-box at best. We need to approach this issue with much more purpose, nuance and understanding, build capacity and knowledge, collaborate with experts and peers and be more transparent around our businesses and supply chains. It can be easy to sweep issues like this under the carpet as much of this problem is ‘hidden in plain sight’. Table 1 provides some facts that may surprise and shock you. Table 1. Modern Slavery - The Facts2 ■ An estimated 40.3m people worldwide are in modern slavery, including 24.9m in forced labour and 15.4m in forced marriage. 70% of these are women and girls. ■ This equates to 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world. ■ 1 in 4 victims of modern slavery are children. ■ Of the 24.9m victims of forced labour, 16m people are exploited in the private sector including domestic work, construction or agriculture. 4.8m people are victims of forced sexual exploitation, and 4m were in forced labour imposed by state authorities. ■ Women and girls account for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors of forced labour. ■ There is no typical victim of slavery. Victims are men, women and children of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities and cut across the population. However, it is normally more prevalent among the most vulnerable or within minority or socially excluded groups. In 2018, the UK Modern Slavery Helpline indicated that 3,280 potential victims of modern slavery cases were men, while 1,476 were women. ■ Poverty, limited opportunities at home, lack of education, unstable social and political conditions, economic imbalances and war are some of the key drivers that contribute to someone's vulnerability in becoming a victim of modern slavery. Victims can often face more than one type of abuse and slavery, for example, being sold on to another trafficker and then forced into another form of exploitation. ■ Potential victims of human trafficking were reported from 130 different nationalities in 2018 according to the National Crime Agency's National Referral Mechanism statistics. UK, Albanian and Vietnamese nationals were the most commonly reported potential victims. 6,993 potential victims were submitted to the National Referral Mechanism in 2018, a 36% increase on 2017. A framework of broader ‘social compliance’ Predating the launch of the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, the food and beverage sector had been trying to understand and articulate its impact on corporate social responsibility, without any consistent or common language and framework. In response, Sedex (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange)3 was founded in 2001 by a group of UK retailers to drive convergence in social audit standards and monitoring practices. Sedex is a not-for-profit, membership organisation that leads work with buyers and suppliers to deliver improvements in responsible and ethical business practices in global supply chains. Sedex is now the largest collaborative platform for managing ethical supply chain data worldwide. Members can share and manage information related to labour standards, health and safety, the environment and business ethics. Social ‘SMETA’ (Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit) standards have been developed, with other risk analysis tools and collaborations. Most standards and codes of practice appraised by Gate to Plate Compliance are based upon the ETI (Ethical Trade Initiative4) Base Code. The ETI Base Code itself is founded on the conventions of the International Labour Organisation5 and is an internationally recognised code of labour practice. These platforms were therefore not designed to combat the specific challenges around modern slavery. However, the food and beverage sector had been gradually adopting Sedex membership and voluntarily carrying out SMETA audits in an effort to express their commitments to eliminating modern slavery and their CSR credentials. The retail sector in particular has been a key stakeholder in this movement and, since the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, most retail companies have mandated or recommended Sedex membership to their suppliers and required SMETA audits to be carried out on a risk assessment basis. Foodservice operators have typically been much slower to adopt these standards and in many cases still do not recognise or mandate them. Instead, insights in terms of ethical standards are obtained via self-assessment questionnaires gathered from suppliers, in addition to adopting ‘halo’ certification standards at product level, such as Fair Trade on coffee, cocoa and bananas and RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil). As a result, the foodservice procurement and technical functions tend to ‘piggyback’ on suppliers own endeavours or utilise insight from activity, audits and compliance carried out on behalf of the retailers. As best practice a statement should aim to include information regarding the company's own business and structures, and those of its supply chains. This has resulted in a confused approach to compliance with the Modern Slavery Act. In reality the specific requirements of the Home Office Statutory Guidance6 have been lost in the mix, in particular Section 54 around transparency in supply chains. Review of food and beverage company compliance with the Act It is important to note that the Modern Slavery Act does not dictate in precise detail what a statement must include, or how it should be structured. It does, however, provide a non-exhaustive list of information that may be included. As best practice a statement should aim to include information regarding the company's own business and structures, and those of its supply chains, Tier 1 and beyond. It must be risk based, demonstrate continuous improvements and be signed off by a director of that business, amongst other criteria. In order to establish some facts, in Quarter 4 of 2019 Gate to Plate Compliance carried out an extensive desktop review of the activities, commitments and statements of 200 of the largest food and beverage companies by turnover in the UK, all above the £36m turnover threshold of the Modern Slavery Act. The insights set out below are meant as a critique of the quality and compliance of the status of the Modern Slavery Statements published by food and beverage companies above the £36m threshold. In general the majority of companies have reviewed their internal process well, introduced HR safeguarding and controls, established a whistle blowing process and joined some third party initiatives. However, for a large majority, the most common cause of non-compliance is an absence of any quantified activity as part of Section 54 Transparency in Supply Chains (TISC). The key examples being: A failure to set out clearly the extent and dynamics of its supply chains Absence of supply chain mapping or diligence beyond Tier 1 No evidence of an identified risk assessed approach to product, country of origin etc. An absence of codes of practice or ethical trading policies No engagement with third party subject matter expertise and platforms No quantitative key performance indicators or year-on-year measures of improvement An absence of any formal social audit programme or regime of unannounced inspection Absence of training for key internal front line staff to spot and stop slavery. Specific observations included: 31% (62 out of the 200 statements) were noncompliant (Figure 1), based upon the Home Office guidance. This is a generous figure, a more prescriptive approach would produce a much higher percentage. 8% (16 companies) had not yet even produced a statement four years after the Act was passed. There were still many examples within the data set of basic formatting issues, such as the statement not being dated, not covering the last financial year, not being available on the homepage of the company's website and not being signed by a director of the business. The general standard of statements is poor at best, with an evident lack of legal oversight in terms of content, spurious claims lacking in substance to demonstrate compliance, no evidence of real world interventions and programmes to tackle the issues There are particular sectors within 31% of non-compliant companies that are clearly misunderstanding their obligations, or more worryingly perhaps ignoring them. This includes some of the largest and most well known operators in UK food and beverage: Figure 1Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Sector percentage of top 200 F&B non-compliant MSA statements Conclusions The food and beverage sector has a long way to go to demonstrate compliance to the Modern Slavery Act and is clearly not yet recognising the obligation and resourcing accordingly. That said, this is not unique to food and is a wider corporate issue. Modern Slavery needs its Blue Planet moment and it is coming soon. Modern Slavery should not be the price we pay for cheap goods. The Act is currently being reviewed and impact assessed, and recommendations are being prepared to further tighten the legislation in the coming years. Without question the in-trays of businesses in the UK food and beverage sector are spilling over with GDPR, gender pay gap, and other legislation to adhere to, but ignoring the problem of modern slavery could result in a human tragedy on a global scale. REFERENCES 1https://tiscreport.org/Google Scholar 2https://www.unseenuk.org/modern-slavery/facts-and-figuresGoogle Scholar 3www.sedexglobal.comGoogle Scholar 4www.ethicaltrade.orgGoogle Scholar 5www.ilo.orgGoogle Scholar 6https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transparency-in-supply-chains-a-practical-guideGoogle Scholar Rick Sanderson, FIFST, MD of Gate to Plate Compliance Rick spent 25 years working across various sectors of the food industry, in procurement, commercial and technical roles, for FTSE 250 companies, and large agri-food operators. He spent more than six years working in the transparency and compliance arena, with considerably more focus since the 2015 Modern Slavery Act (MSA). Specifically in the last year or so Rick has been working with the Modern Slavery charity Unseen UK, and has been a supporting partner in the launch of a new programme to tackle this issue called ‘Back2Source’, which has been co-authored by Justine Currell, Executive Director at Unseen. Justine is ex-Home Office and drafted the original Modern Slavery Act under Rt Hon Theresa May. The standard aims to offer a fully managed programme to help companies comply with the requirements of the Act, and Gate to Plate Compliance is working on the deployment of this programme in the food and beverage sector. More importantly it is a personal cause that Rick has campaigned and commented on for several years. Email rick@gatetoplate.org.uk Email gatetoplate.org.uk Volume34, Issue1March 2020Pages 44-47 FiguresReferencesRelatedInformation