Work Package 1 – Trash Fish Supply Chains
Trash fish (also known as forage fish or low-value fish) are made up of juveniles (small, baby fish) of a variety of fish species. Trash fish is a critical ingredient in animal feed including for pet food, for livestock, and for farmed fish.
In Thai, trash fish is called pla pet or ‘fish for duck’; in Vietnamese, trash fish is called cá heo, or ‘fish for pork’.
Definitions of trash fish are contested. Our first task will be to ask: ‘what is trash fish?’ and how does trash fish move from the water, to the boat, to port, onto the truck and into Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai markets?
Our approach to understanding trash fish supply chains will be to draw on political economy to highlight traceability, labour dynamics and power in transnational supply chains. We aim to highlight traceability mechanisms, ‘to trace’ and ‘to track’ trash fish from harvest to sale, mapping out supply chain actors on fishing boats targeting various species and workers at port pre-processing sites, while also considering where trash fish moves at a regional scale.
Methods: Snowball interview techniques, port-based observations, public company document analysis, fisheries production data, international trade data