According to the International Labour Organization, forced labor is a problem that affects nearly 19 million people in the private economy across the world. There have been reports of forced labor in the Southeast Asian fishing industry. Mars Petcare sources fish in this region — mainly in Thailand — and we run a risk of finding human rights issues in our fishery supply chains there. Therefore, we are taking immediate steps to understand and seek to prevent the issue within our extended supply chain.

Millions of people rely on the fishery industry, and we want to be a part of the solution to the human rights and environmental challenges it is currently facing. We have developed an Action Plan to guide our efforts as we seek to protect and promote human rights in our Thai fish supply chain. Building on the lessons-learned from this plan, we will roll out similar actions across our fish supply chains in other parts of the world. Our ambition is for the human rights of everyone in our fish supply chain to be respected and to seek the elimination of forced labor. We know progress toward this ambition requires cross-sector collaboration, complementing our own efforts.

Forced labor is a major issue we are focused on in our global approach to human rights. In our global Mars, Incorporated Human Rights Policy, we commit to promoting and respecting human rights throughout our value chain. Our policy is aligned with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Our Thai Fish Supply Chain Human Rights Action Plan follows the Mars’ global Human Rights Framework:

Our Action Plan priorities are: 

Commit 
Increase the number of dedicated, local staff to lead our work in Thailand and ensure strong governance by the Global Petcare Management Team. 

Assess 
Seek full traceability of our supply chain and engage with human rights experts, social compliance firms and community-based NGOs to conduct human rights conditions assessments. 

Respond 
Activate prevention and monitoring systems across our supply chain as we seek to ensure that human rights standards are upheld, including support for awareness-raising and capability building among relevant industry actors and workers. 

Engage 
Collaborate with others in industry, government and civil society to drive systemic change across the industry, engaging in transparent dialogues with stakeholders and regularly reporting on our commitments, progress and challenges.