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Seafood sale sector at a Canadian supermarket. (Photo: SeaChoice)
New tool to know retailers’ fisheries sustainability commitment
(CANADA, 6/6/2018)
Environmental NGO SeaChoice has created a new online tool for consumers to have the chance to know seafood retailers’ seafood sustainability practices.
This new tool, called Seafood Progress, allows Canadians to determine if their favourite places to shop are taking action to improve some of the most unsustainable fish consumers eat.
“Retailers can 'do better' by providing information to the public and supporting improvements to fisheries and farms, despite the fact that all have promised to protect the world’s last wild food source,” pointed out SeaChoice national manager Sarah Foster.
“Corporate social responsibility is absolutely moving forward toward more transparency for the consumer,” Foster stressed.
The company that developed this online tool used 22 performance indicators against six steps forming the vision for sustainable seafood, developed by NGOs across North America by compiling publicly available information from nine major retailers as a national average — including Loblaws, Buy-Low Foods and Walmart.
Its report noted six actions for retailers, such as regularly publishing how much seafood is in line with their commitment and increasing guidelines for social responsibility.
But many retailers told SeaChoice that they do not have sufficient market leverage to make changes, particularly with globally traded commodities such as farmed shrimp, skipjack tuna or farmed Atlantic salmon, all of which the group suggests consumers avoid.
SeaChoice informed that four of the retailers have not publicly disclosed information and only two have social responsibility plans with a credible international standard.
“If retailers are going to sell some of the more unsustainable seafood products available in Canada, they should be taking action to improve fisheries and farm practices,” Foster said. “They should be collecting pertinent data like the species type and country of origin,” she added.
The report found that roughly 60 per cent of seafood was “poorly labelled,” which it explains that that is because according to Canadian law, retailers need only provide common names and the last country of major processing.
However, it noted that common names are opaque compared to scientific-species names.
“There are some that represent 300 species,” Foster explained, adding that some of these are sustainably caught or facing significant challenges.
There is no legislation that says you need to be told that, pointing to the example of sockeye salmon that is caught in Russia and shipped whole, and is then marked as Canadian, since it is the last major point of processing.
This is in stark contrast to the European Union — which requires a scientific name, geographic origin and country of processing.
“We aren’t giving this info to our consumers at home,” Foster explained. “The retailers have more info than they’re disclosing to the consumer in their labelling.”
“But imported food is less sustainable and nearly one-third can’t be ranked because the seafood is not traceable from boat to plate and is poorly labelled,” Foster concluded.
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