Reports received related to foraging or harvesting of wild plants and wildlife
Freedom of Information Act request.
Ref: FOI 25-26 06
Date issued: 7 May 2025
Subject: Reports received related to foraging or harvesting of wild plants and wildlife
Question:
Please provide the relevant information for the period between 1 April 2020 and the most recent date for which data is available.
Please could you provide the following:
- The number of reports received by The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority within the specified period, related to foraging or the harvesting of wild plants and wildlife, including shellfish gathered on the coast. For each report please provide the following data:
a. The species of wildlife picked
b. The location of the alleged incident
c. The suspected number of individuals involved
d. A summary of further action taken
- Does The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority hold any internal reports or assessments relating to illegal or commercial foraging or picking of plants and wildlife, including seafood harvested on the coast (such as cockles)?
a. If yes, please share a list of the internal reports or assessments.
b. If sharing them would raise privacy issues or trigger other exemptions, please share summaries of the reports and explain why sharing the full reports is not possible.
- Does The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority currently collaborate with any other agencies or organisations to monitor or prevent illegal foraging or the picking of plants and wildlife, including seafood harvested on the coast (such as cockles)?
1. If yes, please share a list with the names of the agencies or organisations.
2. If sharing the names would raise privacy issues or trigger other exemptions, please share the number of agencies or organisations that Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority currently collaborates with.
If you need to carry out a key terms search to locate these records, please include the terms “foraged”, “foraging”, “wild food”, “forager”, “wild ingredients”, “cockles”, “shellfish”, “gathering”. If you would document these cases in another way, please include these results as per the spirit of my request.
Our Response:
1. The GLAA regulates businesses that provide workers to the fresh produce supply chain and horticulture industry (including shellfish gathering), to ensure they meet the employment standards required by law.
Between 01/04/2020 and 31/03/2025, the GLAA logged 188 referrals related to shellfish gathering. The GLAA does not record data related to ‘foraging’ or ‘wild plants / wildlife’.
a) The information requested for questions 1a, 1b and 1c is not routinely and/or consistently recorded in a retrievable manner. It would require a manual assessment. We estimate this would exceed the cost thresholds set out under Section 12 of the FOIA. Therefore, we are unable to provide an answer.
Under our duty to assist (section 16) you may wish to reduce your request further to ask for regions where these referrals were made from.
d) Of these 188 referrals, 52 progressed to an investigation.
2. The GLAA does not create reports on the issue you have requested. However, the GLAA creates a variety of intelligence products to support operational and strategic decision-making in relation to workers operating in shellfish gathering. These are sensitive in nature and fall outside your request.
Under our duty to assist (section 16), you may be interested in our Shellfish Industry Profile available on our website.
3. Monitoring or preventing these activities does not fall under the GLAA’s remit. The GLAA regulates the provision of labour into, and investigation of Modern Slavery offences in – the shellfish gathering sector and works with several enforcement partner agencies, and non-governmental / organisations to do so.