SeaChoice

Category: Sustainability

  • Over 80 groups call out eco-certified extinction

    Over 80 groups call out eco-certified extinction

    SeaChoice leads global call to stop greenwashing extinction of prehistoric skate

    SeaChoice member groups have been holding seafood eco-certifications, such as the Marine and Aquaculture Stewardship Councils, to account for over 20 years. Our expertise has resulted in us leading global collaborations with other conservation organisations to call out the greenwash and demand certifications live up to their promises.

    Most recently, Living Oceans helped rally over 80 organisations from around the world calling on the Best Aquaculture Practices and GLOBALG.A.P. schemes to immediately revoke their ‘sustainability’ certifications from salmon and ocean trout farms adjacent to the World Heritage Area, Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast of Tasmania.

    Here’s the press release:

    MORE THAN 80 GROUPS WORLDWIDE DEMAND FARMED SALMON ACCREDITATIONS STOP GREENWASHING THE EXTINCTION OF THE MAUGEAN SKATE

    Shoppers being misled by eco-certifications on Macquarie Harbour farmed salmon

    For immediate release 25th July 2023

    More than 80 organisations from around the globe are calling for the accreditation schemes, Best Aquaculture Practices and GlobalG.A.P., to immediately revoke their ‘sustainability’ certifications from farmed salmon and trout raised in waters adjacent to the World Heritage Area, Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania.

    The demand comes as federal and state government workshops are held in Hobart this week to decide on urgent action to prevent the extinction of the Maugean skate – a rare animal related to sharks and dating back to the time of dinosaurs.

    Despite scientific evidence that industrial fish farms in Macquarie Harbour are having a major impact on the waterway’s health and skate numbers, all three salmon farming companies operating in the harbour are certified as “environmentally responsible” by BAP or GlobalG.A.P.

    Signatories from 17 countries have sent open letters to both schemes demanding withdrawal of certification, condemning the misleading of unsuspecting shoppers, and calling for an end to greenwashing the extinction of the prehistoric skate. 

    The signatories include marine, shark conservation, animal welfare, and community groups, as well as independent scientists, a public policy think tank, and award-winning authors.

    Found only in Macquarie Harbour, the endangered Maugean Skate is one of the listed natural values of the World Heritage Area.

    Scientists from the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies renewed their alarm recently after reporting a dramatic collapse in Maugean skate numbers with almost half disappearing in less than seven years.

    The scientists attribute the Maugean skate’s decline to the degraded environmental conditions in the Harbour, particularly dissolved oxygen levels, and explicitly named fish farms as one of the main causes of low dissolved oxygen levels in Macquarie Harbour.

    Quotes:

    “Major supermarkets rely on these certifications to sell farmed salmon and ocean trout with their “responsibly sourced” logos as part of their sustainable seafood policies. But there is nothing responsible about driving one of the rarest skate species in the world to extinction.” – Kelly Roebuck, SeaChoice 

    “This is certified ecocide. The Maugean Skate has one critical habitat, one chance at survival, the science is there, and the urgent action that is required to save this animal is simply not happening. Instead, we have greenwashing.” – Jessica Coughlan, Neighbours of Fish Farms 

    “These certifications must not shirk their responsibility here.  They cannot palm this off to the auditors or wait until the companies’ next audit to address this dire situation. Macquarie Harbour fish farm certifications should be immediately revoked, or they will be the first certification schemes in the world to certify an extinction of a species.” – Alistair Allan, Bob Brown Foundation

    “Shoppers should be outraged to know that not only are they being misled by these certification claims, but they are unknowingly contributing to the demise of a species as old as the dinosaurs,” – Rebecca Howarth, Environment Tasmania

    “The federal government is in Hobart again this week because the Tasmanian Government cannot be trusted to prevent the extinction of this species. Meanwhile, so-called ‘sustainability’ certification continues to greenwash the unsustainable practices of the salmon industry.” – Eloise Carr, Tasmanian Director, the Australia Institute

    Media contacts:

    Kelly Roebuck, SeaChoice kroebuck@livingoceans.org 0432 660 064

    Backgrounder:

    Letter to Best Aquaculture Practices 

    Tassal (Cooke Aquaculture) and Petuna (Sealord) are BAP certified

    Letter to GlobalG.A.P. 

    Huon Aquaculture (JBS) is GlobalG.A.P. certified

    IMAS Interim Report: Macquarie Harbour Maugean skate population status and monitoring 

  • MSC’s Revised Standard – Big Blue Future or Big Blue Failure?

    Make Stewardship Count, a coalition co-founded by SeaChoice, fears Marine Stewardship Council’s revised Fishery Standard doesn’t go far enough to protect marine life and ocean habitat.  

    Commonly recognized by its blue tick logo affixed to more than 20,000 products globally, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is the world’s largest and most prominent seafood certification scheme, with over 400 fisheries across the globe certified under its standard. Make Stewardship Count is a coalition that engages with the Marine Stewardship Council to advance improvements in the certification and has engaged significantly as a key stakeholder over the 5 year-long Fisheries Standard Review (FSR), implemented on May 1, 2023. 

    The MSC Fisheries Standard is meant to provide a framework within which the environmental impacts and effective management of a fishery can be assessed before it can use the MSC blue tick label. Consumers, retailers, and those working in the seafood industry must be able to trust that the label represents seafood caught sustainably and ethically. The Fisheries Standard Review provided MSC and stakeholders the opportunity to set the bar higher and drive real improvements in global fisheries.  

    Make Stewardship Count produced final scorecards based on a traffic light system to assess the final version of the standard against its list of critical asks and call for transparency. The scorecards, ranking the elements of the revised Standard in mostly red and yellow, reflect that although there are some improvements, it falls below best practice in many other areas. 

    Early drafts of the new Standard generated optimism, as they included several of the improvements that SeaChoice and the coalition had been calling for throughout the review. While some of these improvements made it into the final version of the Standard, others were removed at the final critical stage of the review, with little explanation or opportunity for stakeholder input. Two such removed improvements include: marine mammal protection from fishing and science-based targets for observer coverage on board vessels. These would have been powerful requirements in the certification. 

    One of the strongest and most welcome improvements to the Standard, gaining one of the few ‘green’ scores from the coalition is the requirement for MSC fisheries to have a policy in place that sharks must be landed with their fins naturally attached to their bodies, a globally recognized best practice.  

    Throughout the review process, the coalition challenged MSC to strengthen its requirements for the protection of Endangered, Threatened and Protected (ETP) species and is pleased that MSC focused on designing a significantly improved ETP species designation process. However, the new Standard allows species designated as ETP to be considered eligible for certification as an MSC product by introducing ‘modification factors’. These factors risk undermining designation improvements and are not precautious enough. The coalition worries that this will allow economically valuable ETP species to become MSC certified, despite not being well managed or recovering. 

    It is impossible to know how and if changes to the Standard will truly impact certifications until they are applied to fisheries over the next several years. Ultimately, the coalition is concerned that the new Standard, which will be in place for at least the next decade, will continue to be awarded to fisheries that routinely catch vulnerable animals, waste excessive amounts of sea life, damage ecosystems and catch overfished species. 

    Visit the Make Stewardship Count website to learn about their final scorecard on the Standard contents, the Review process and more details about the new V3.0 MSC Fisheries Standard. 

  • Over 40 groups call ASC’s “farmed responsibly” label on salmon misleading

    Over 40 groups call ASC’s “farmed responsibly” label on salmon misleading

    ASC draft Farm Standard outrageously proposes to have industry audit themselves. 

    Recently, more than 40 civil society groups from across the globe joined forces in a letter submission to the Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s Farm Standard consultation calling out the certification scheme for misleading shoppers with their “farmed responsibly” label on open net pen farmed salmon. 

    The ASC’s “farmed responsibly” label features prominently on farmed salmon products in seafood cases of major supermarkets around the world. The label suggests to consumers that the product was “farmed responsibly” for its complete farming cycle. 

    However, in actuality, the ASC label does not guarantee an ASC certified salmon was “farmed responsibly” from hatchery to harvest.

    The truth is, a salmon product with the ASC logo on the package is likely to have met the ASC standard rules for only some of its production cycle: the hatchery and final growout farm stages. In fact, more than one-third of the salmon’s life is never assessed for environmental impact, such as sea lice outbreaks or chemical treatments.

    Currently, the interim stage of the production cycle is excluded from auditing and compliance with the ASC Salmon Standard.

    This is akin to saying an apple that was farmed using conventional non-organic methods for a significant portion of its growing season and organic methods for only some portion is still okay to label as “organic” on a supermarket shelf.

    SeaChoice first uncovered that auditors in British Columbia were omitting intermediary farms (initial grow-out sites that are used between the hatchery and final grow-out stage) from ASC compliance in our 2017 What’s Behind the Label report. Our subsequent 2018 Global Review of the ASC Salmon Standard confirmed the issue was also occurring elsewhere: transfers between non-certified and certified farms were observed in Australia, Canada, Chile, Norway and Scotland (although some more so than others). 

    The ASC responded with an interpretation for auditors that allowed them to continue to exclude the interim farm stage of production from audits. In effect, the ASC endorsed the loophole – despite acknowledging that the intent of those that established the Salmon Standard was to address the impacts associated with the complete production cycle. 

    The loophole has likely resulted in irresponsible farming practices that have gone unnoticed under the guise of ASC’s “farmed responsibly” label. In fact, we know this has been the case. 

    Case in point: ASC certified Hardwicke farm received fish that spent 14 months at the non-certified interim farm, Larsen, where the fish received 175.308 kg of Florfenicol antibiotics. Florfenicol is often used to treat Tenacibaculum maritimum aka mouth rot in Atlantic salmon. A recent study links farm-origin T. maritimum exposure and infection with potential negative consequences to Fraser River sockeye survival . Despite this, the ASC audit report for this production cycle of fish states zero antibiotics were used. 

    With their credibility at stake, it appears the ASC is finally taking note. The draft ASC Farm Standard proposes closing the loophole by requiring that the complete farming production cycle shall comply with the standard.

    But, it looks like they have been listening to the salmon farming industry too. 

    The draft ASC Farm Standard also proposes that the final grow-out farm applying for ASC certification takes responsibility for auditing their “suppliers” of the early production cycle stages for compliance against the standard.  As grow-out salmon farms are typically owned by the same company that also owns and operates the hatchery and early net pen sites, this will result in companies auditing themselves for ASC compliance for a substantial portion of the production cycle (from 12 to 30 months out of a 36~ month farmed salmon production cycle) – rather than a third-party accredited auditor.

    As the joint submission letter makes clear: any potential gains from closing the loophole will likely be undermined by ASC’s allowance for companies to essentially certify themselves.  

    According to ISEAL, an organization that defines Credibility Principles for sustainability standards for which ASC is a member, certification schemes should ensure that auditing processes are impartial and independent. 

    In other words, ‘the fox guarding the henhouse’ scenario has no place in sustainability claims. 

    As consumers, we place our trust in these promises. More than two-thirds of Canadian shoppers have checked for eco-labels, including certifications, when shopping. By preferentially choosing eco-labelled seafood products over ones without, shoppers place their trust in that eco-certification and its sustainability promise. 

    But consumers are also overwhelmingly concerned about greenwashing. The majority of shoppers would stop purchasing a seafood product if its claim was found to be greenwashing.

    Eco-labels, including the ASC, must live up to their promises or risk being seen as industry greenwash. The proposal to allow the industry to audit how “responsible” they are against the ASC Standard is not a credible solution. 

    SeaChoice and fellow signatories will be closely watching the next draft of the Farm Standard, due out for public consultation in September 2022, to see if ASC chooses credibility or industry greenwash. Stay tuned!

  • Red rating confirms shoppers should avoid B.C. net-pen farmed salmon

    Red rating confirms shoppers should avoid B.C. net-pen farmed salmon

    Red rating challenges farmed salmon certification sustainability claims.

    In case you missed it, in December, B.C. farmed salmon was red-listed by U.S. seafood sustainability rating program, Seafood Watch (SFW). The downgrade confirms seafood shoppers should avoid buying B.C. open net-pen farmed salmon. 

    But it also raises questions about how these very same farms can be eco-certified as “farmed responsibly”, despite being red rated. So let’s break down the situation. 

    What earned B.C.’s industry a red rating?

    The SFW assessment acknowledges that sea lice outbreaks, fuelled by ineffective lice management and drug resistance, continue to plague farms and place juvenile wild salmon at risk. Meanwhile, rapidly developing research from the Strategic Salmon Health Initiative (and other groups) has highlighted concerns that bacterial and viral pathogens, which are released freely into the surrounding water by farms, could be leading to negative consequences to vulnerable wild salmon populations. 

    B.C.’s salmon farming industry also received a red rating because of its continued use of antibiotics listed as “highly important for human medicine” by the World Health Organization. On average, a B.C. salmon farm uses antibiotics 1.3 times a year. 

    What about those B.C. farms that are certified as “responsible” and “best practice”? 

    All active B.C. grow-out farms are certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP). These are the same farms that produced the red rating. Yet even SFW, which assigned the red rating, recommends ASC-certified salmon as a “buy” option; but does not recommend BAP-certified salmon. Confusing, no?

    SeaChoice has serious concerns regarding SFW’s “buy” endorsement for ASC salmon. The recommendation is based on an out-of-date exercise from 2017, in which SFW assessed the ASC’s Salmon Standard against its own methodology and benchmarked ASC’s salmon certification as equivalent to its yellow or “good alternative” rating. However, the benchmark is based on an obsolete version of the ASC Standard (it has been updated twice since 2017) and fails to take into account ASC-approved changes to the Standard that substantially alter or exempt farms from critical environmental provisions. 

    Are any sustainability certifications living up to their claims?

    Aquaculture certifications and their associated labels make open net-pen farmed salmon appear sustainable. In actuality, these certifications are failing to protect wild salmon from disease and sea lice due to their loopholes and many “business as usual” criteria for farm certification. 

    That SFW used data from ASC-certified B.C. salmon farms to come to its red rating due to uncontrolled sea lice outbreaks is evidence of the fact that ASC certification is not protecting wild salmon.  ASC farms in B.C. have had sea lice counts over 20 mature lice per fish, while others had counts as high as 149 times the level ASC prescribes in its Standard. The farms were simply exempted from complying with this aspect of the Standard.

    Read more about how farmed salmon certified labels stack up in our infosheet on the topic – as part of our ‘Beyond Open Net-Pen Aquaculture’ briefing series. 

    Red rating comes at a pivotal moment for the industry

    Serendipitously, another related and significant development occurred in December – the Minister of Fisheries’ mandate letter re-committed the government to the following:

    “Continue to work with the province of British Columbia and Indigenous communities on a responsible plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025”

    This commitment has the potential to ensure the industry is actually observing “best practice” and its product is “responsibly farmed” – and not just certified with the claim to be so. The rating of B.C. farmed salmon as “avoid” due to its impacts on wild salmon reinforces the need to transition the industry from coastal waters to land-based recirculating closed systems. Such farming systems have earned a SFW green, or “best choice” rating. 

    So, should you buy B.C. farmed salmon, or not?

    Certifications that claim “best practice” or “farmed responsibly” don’t cut it when those practices are largely industry norms that continue to threaten wild salmon populations. Until such time that the B.C. salmon farming industry transitions to land-based, closed containment facilities, shoppers should continue to avoid open net-pen farmed salmon – certified or not. 

  • Behind those ‘responsibly farmed’ seafood labels

    Behind those ‘responsibly farmed’ seafood labels

    Including NGOs in aquaculture certifications is key to preventing industry greenwash

    Canadian shoppers care about sustainable seafood. More than two-thirds check for eco-labels, including certifications, at least some of the time. By preferentially choosing eco-labelled seafood products over ones without, shoppers place their trust in that eco-certification, its sustainability promise and the systems behind it. But it is who is included – or excluded – in those behind-the-scenes systems that make an eco-certification legitimate or a potential greenwash.

    As advocates for environmental protection and social responsibility, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have a significant stake in certification decisions, provide invaluable expertise, local knowledge and oversight of industry. Likewise, for Indigenous peoples and other local communities. These stakeholders can grant legitimacy to a certification. When legitimacy is not granted, this can lead to public facing campaigns and criticisms. 

    The three most prominent aquaculture eco-certifications, Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and GLOBALG.A.P., act as authorities for defining farmed seafood sustainability. Their eco-labels can be found on farmed seafood such as Atlantic salmon, shrimp, basa and tilapia. Retailers often cite them in their sustainable seafood policies. Aquaculture companies become certified in hopes of gaining a social licence, market access and premium prices. 

    SeaChoice’s latest report, Accountability in Seafood Sustainability: Improving the legitimacy of aquaculture certifications through better transparency and stakeholder inclusivity, reviewed the extent to which ASC, BAP and GLOBALG.A.P. are a product of and a platform for civil society stakeholder engagement. Here is some of what we found:

    • All three certifications engage with civil society stakeholders in some form or another, though, some more so than others. At a basic level, each provides stakeholder consultation opportunities during the development and revision of their standard(s). But the opportunities differed when we looked at governance structures and farm audit processes.
    • The GLOBALG.A.P. certification lacks civil society stakeholder representation on its standard-development and governance bodies. Instead industry members exclusively hold these positions. When eco-certifications instill a multi-stakeholder balance within their governance structures, they help ensure all opinions are fairly represented and considered. ASC and BAP includes civil society and industry stakeholders on their respective governance bodies. 
    • It is an unfortunate truth that, globally, aquaculture operations often lack transparency and consultation – both from the industry and governments. Concerningly, our report found some auditing practices of the voluntary eco-certifications are no better. For example, consumers and civil society stakeholders won’t find any published audit reports to demonstrate a farm’s compliance with the BAP or GLOBALG.A.P. standards. In addition, both lack a requirement to consult with local stakeholders during farm audits. This means that valuable expertise and on-the-ground oversight, as well as local knowledge and concerns, are being ignored. In comparison, ASC certified farms are subjected to audits that include local stakeholder consultation and audit reports are published. 
    • We also found that the ASC was the only aquaculture certification that has conducted and published a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) program. M&E programs are critical for demonstrating to all stakeholders how a scheme is performing against its stated theory of change or objectives (e.g., to improve the sustainability of aquaculture operators). 

    In short, eco-certifications are less likely to be considered ‘greenwash’ if they have buy-in and support from civil society stakeholders. But obtaining such support means schemes need to be inclusive and transparent – or risk being seen as ‘the fox guarding the henhouse’.

    So, should you continue to buy that eco-certified seafood? Generally speaking, yes. Another SeaChoice report found that independent eco-certification claims were more reliable and verifiable than self-declared environmental claims by companies. But no certification is perfect. This is why SeaChoice and other civil society groups advocate for improvements while calling out the egregious as necessary.

    Nor is certification alone the only solution to fixing the problems of farmed seafood (or whichever commodity it is). Governments need to ensure stronger regulations while protecting sensitive habitats and species (such as the removal of open-net pen salmon farms from Canadian waters). Retailers and seafood companies need to make sure their supply chains are not contributing to environmental degradation and social harms (see Seafood Progress to view how your local supermarket performs). 

    Finally, sometimes we don’t need to rely on eco-labels to tell us the best options for the health of our planet: recycled paper, electric vehicles, solar power. These are all better options in their commodity fields. Likewise, there are some farmed seafood options – such as shellfish and seaweed – that are inherently more sustainable regardless of whether or not they have a certified label. Moules frites, anyone?

  • A personal reflection on Seaspiracy

    A personal reflection on Seaspiracy

    Many issues the Netflix film covers hit home, but details and the proposed solution miss the mark.

    Seaspiracy, a Netflix film about our impact on the oceans, has people talking. Prominent marine conservation organizations and fisheries scientists have highlighted its misrepresentation of scientific facts and contested its main message (for example, here and here) — that there’s no way to produce seafood sustainably so people should stop eating it.

    Commentators have also noted the film’s:

    • Failure to acknowledge the need for and benefits of small-scale and artisanal fisheries
    • Colonial overtones
    • Lack of positive representation from the global South
    • Misrepresentation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their staff
    • Omission that there are 177 NGOs working on a global campaign to eliminate harmful fishing subsidies
    • Implication that three billion people switching to land-based protein wouldn’t have an environmental impact

    I knew I’d find the film upsetting. After over a decade working in fisheries and marine conservation, I’m more familiar than I’d like to be with whaling, shark finning, overfishing, destructive fishing practices, bycatch of marine animals, plastic pollution and human rights abuses.

    Watching the film, I agreed with its points about the interconnection between marine ecosystem health and human health; the challenges of controlling and policing vessels on the high seas, thousands of miles from the nearest coast; the interplay between economics and environmental degradation.

    However, I don’t agree that everyone should stop eating seafood — because this won’t stop the atrocities in the film from happening. And not all fishing is conducted the way the film represents. For example, in many Canadian fisheries, fleets of small boats operate in well-managed, tightly controlled fisheries.

    For millions of people worldwide, not eating seafood is not an option — it’s their primary source of protein and/or employment. Millions in richer countries have their choice of protein options but — as awful as many of the film’s scenes are — few will stop eating seafood, even if they feel guilty about it. As the environmental community has learned over decades of trying to elicit behaviour change, telling people about their negative impacts seldom works, especially for things that require significant lifestyle change, like giving up flying or eating meat.

    My hope is that people who watch this film come away with a better understanding of why our food choices matter. If you want to stop eating seafood, or all meat, that’s a valid choice. If you decide to continue eating seafood, Seaspiracy shows some of the risks. But you can substantially lower your risk of contributing to those problems:

    • Find out how and where seafood products are harvested. Canada’s weak seafood labelling laws make this challenging, but asking for more information is essential if you want to use sustainability guides like those from Ocean Wise or Seafood Watch that assess and score the sustainability of hundreds of seafood types.
    • Buy seafood with a reputable eco-label. The Marine Stewardship Council, while not perfect, is driving positive change. Products carrying their label are more likely to be responsibly produced than those without. The same goes for the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and Best Aquaculture Practice labels. This article underlines labelling practices to be cautious of.
    • Support businesses following best practices, including labelling and traceability. You can buy Canadian-produced, sustainable, traceable seafood. Check out Skipper Otto, Organic Ocean and Afishionado.
    • Tell your retailer you care about sustainable seafood. Every major retailer in Canada has committed to sourcing (at least some) sustainable seafood, but practices vary in scope and ambition. Seafood Progress shows your retailer’s commitment and what steps it’s taking to improve seafood production. Tweet retailers from their profile pages, talk to seafood counter staff or call customer service lines.
    • Eat low on the food chain. Farmed mussels, clams and oysters benefit ecosystems because they require no or few inputs and feed by filtering water.
    • Learn more. Ian Urbina’s The Outlaw Ocean covers many of Seaspiracy’s themes but doesn’t gloss over the nuance, the human stories and the real reasons the ocean is threatened. Or read Urbina’s series on ocean crimes in the New York Times.

    Given what I know about the seafood industry, I can be a pain for friends or family when we go for sushi. If they watch Seaspiracy, next time they might understand. I’ll continue eating seafood but only if there’s enough information for me to know a product was responsibly produced. This helps support forward-thinking, responsible seafood businesses trying to do the right thing and encourages others to invest in better practices.

  • Not all True North Seafood officially recommended as sustainable by Ocean Wise

    Not all True North Seafood officially recommended as sustainable by Ocean Wise

    You’ve heard the old saying – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 

    Case in point: Last month, Cooke Aquaculture, one of the largest salmon farming companies in the world, proclaimed in its press release and social media posts “True North Seafood officially recommended as sustainable by Ocean Wise”. Some media outlets have amplified the misrepresentation. So, let’s set the record straight.

    Contrary to Cooke’s statement, only a part of the True North Seafood brand and associated products are endorsed by Ocean Wise. 

    Stating that the True North Seafood brand is “recommended as sustainable” by the Ocean Wise program could mislead unsuspecting shoppers to assume all of their seafood, including the brand’s net-pen farmed Atlantic salmon, is Ocean Wise endorsed. When in fact, it is not. 

    Why does this matter? Large corporations overreaching their green credentials is, unfortunately, nothing new. However, the negative ramifications from misleading green claims can be far reaching. 

    As outlined in our recently released study, Certification, Verification or Fabrication? An investigation of seafood environmental claims in Canadian retailers, misleading claims can lead to consumer confusion and skepticism towards all environmental claims. At worst, they have the potential to undermine efforts aimed at improving fishery and aquaculture sustainability.  

    A YouGov poll conducted simultaneously with our study found that 83% of Canadians are “somewhat to very concerned” about greenwashing and that 78% of Canadians who purchase seafood would likely stop purchasing a seafood product if its claim were found to be greenwashing.

    There’s no hiding that Cooke Aquaculture has had some not-so-green practices. For example, the company was fined by Washington State for violations associated with the 2017 collapse of their Cypress Island net pen farm that released 250,000 farmed salmon escapees into Puget Sound. Their Kelly Cove division was charged and pleaded guilty to illegal pesticide use that was connected with the deaths of hundreds of lobsters in the Bay of Fundy in 2009. Overly simplified public relation assertions won’t erase these track records. 

    The Ocean Wise program works with its partners to encourage improvements in their sustainability practices and procurement. SeaChoice sincerely hopes positive gains for our oceans are made through the partnership. 

    But we call on Cooke to represent the partnership truthfully and accurately. That is, that the partnership does not mean the True North brand (or Cooke) is recommended as Ocean Wise, but rather that some of Cooke’s True North branded products are Ocean Wise recommended. In turn, these recommended products should be clearly labelled Ocean Wise on the True North website and on product packages.

    Because at the end of the day, we should be able to trust any claims that are made on the products we buy. Environmental claims and eco-labels are meant to make shopping for sustainable seafood easier, not harder. 

  • Is the seafood sold in Canada’s retailers immune to greenwashing? Fishy claims suggest no.

    Is the seafood sold in Canada’s retailers immune to greenwashing? Fishy claims suggest no.

    Seafood companies should provide proof to back up their claims

    “Sustainable”. “Ocean-friendly”. “Responsible”. From canned tuna to frozen fish sticks, these “green” claims seem to be slapped on every kind of seafood product in our grocery stores these days. But what do they mean? And better still, can we count on them to deliver on their promises? SeaChoice decided to find out. Spoiler alert: some are fishier than others. Read on to find out which.

    “Green” or environmental claims – logos and written statements – are supposed to help take the guesswork out of the selection process for shoppers who want to make ocean-friendly seafood purchases. When done right, claims represent a mechanism through which seafood consumers can ‘vote with their wallets’ and improve fishery and aquaculture practices by doing so. But greenwashing, the practice of making a misleading or unsubstantiated claim, can undermine this influence by fooling well-intentioned shoppers and shifting consumer preferences toward products that are not environmentally beneficial and/or creating an unwarranted favourable image of a company.

    We know that Canadians care about greenwashing. A YouGov poll conducted simultaneously with our investigation found that 83% of Canadians are concerned about greenwashing and 78% would likely stop purchasing a seafood product if its claim was found to be greenwashing.

    So, is there a warranted concern that greenwashing is taking place in Canadian supermarket fresh cases, aisles and freezers?

    In our study, Certification, Verification or Fabrication? an investigation of seafood environmental claims in Canadian retailers, released last week, we gathered data about environmental claims by going to 18 supermarket locations across five Canadian cities and provinces. Our sample consisted of 234 environmental claims across 181 seafood products.

    It’s important to understand that not all environmental claims are created equal. Some claims can be independent, such as third-party certifications (e.g., MSC, ASC and BAP) or non-governmental endorsements (e.g., Ocean Wise), or private company self-declarations. We categorized the claims into three types: certifications, endorsements, and self-declared claims. The different types of claims vary in their scope, accuracy, transparency and rigour. They also vary in their interpretation of “sustainability” as there are no regulations that strictly define the term for seafood (or any other commodity) sold in Canada. 

    First, we documented the prevalence of each environmental claim type and found self-declared claims – those made only by the brand, without any third-party backing – were the most common (44% of all claims). The rest were 33% endorsements and 23% certifications.

    Next, we checked whether the claims were backed up by publicly available evidence (i.e., the product label or website) and investigated whether the claim on the product could be verified to be from environmentally friendly fisheries or farms. Forty per cent of self-declarations failed to provide evidence and around six out of every ten self-declared claims were unverifiable. In comparison certifications, followed by endorsements, were found to be far more reliable.

    Finally, we compared self-declared claims against international best practice guidelines for environmental claims. Eight out of every ten self-declared claims were found to be vague and non-specific, over a third failed to provide an explanatory statement with the claim and nearly a quarter used the term “sustainable” (or a variation thereof) despite the recommendation by guidelines not to do so. 

    In summary, the most frequently found environmental claim type in Canadian supermarkets, self-declarations by companies, were the hardest to verify, typically lacked evidence and were often vague. Why would this be so? Self-declared claims rarely involve independent checks. In comparison, certifications generally have four common features: governance structures, standards for sustainability and chain-of-custody, an auditing function, and on-product logos. Self-declared claims typically lack the first three.

    SeaChoice is calling on the government to enact stronger requirements for self-declared claims, particularly for the use of the words “sustainable” and “responsible”, by stipulating that a third-party verification is the only acceptable evidence to support their use. Our investigation findings also support SeaChoice’s push for better seafood labelling laws, as having these would help substantiate the environmental credentials of a given product.

    What about conscientious shoppers just looking to buy some seafood for dinner that won’t harm the oceans? Based on our findings, your best bets are certified products, complementing these with endorsed products as needed. Regardless of the claim type, but particularly when purchasing self-declared products, look for evidence to back up the claim on the product or website. In fact, 90% of you agree that companies should provide publicly available information to back up their claims. So, tell your retailer and the seafood companies whose products  are sold within their stores that you expect this evidence to be provided.

    Lastly, If a product with an environmental claim lacks evidence to back it up, or if you suspect the claim may be a deceptive representation of the product (i.e., greenwashing), contact the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to report a food labelling concern.  Because at the end of the day, fishy claims shouldn’t have a place in our grocery aisles and freezers.  

  • Retailers making little progress when it comes to seafood sustainability

    Retailers making little progress when it comes to seafood sustainability

    When a company makes a commitment, customers expect them to follow through

    This year’s global pandemic has highlighted the importance that grocery stores play in our lives. As we start to look towards recovery, focusing on sustainable and responsible business practices is essential to protect vulnerable people, ecosystems, and consumer trust. But when it comes to seafood sustainability, Seafood Progress shows that most Canadian retailers have made limited progress in the past year.

    This is the third year that SeaChoice has worked with Canada’s eight largest retailers to assess their sustainable seafood commitments and their actions against those commitments. From July 2019 to now, we have no evidence of any improvements by Costco Canada or Save-On-Foods.

    Figure 1: Retailers’ scores on Key Performance Indicator 3.2 (each line represents one retailer’s score)

    However, there are some bright spots – two more retailers are now being transparent about the progress they are making against their sustainable seafood commitment. In the past year, both Sobeys and Walmart Canada announced how much of their fresh and frozen seafood sold in the past year met their commitment (see Figure 1). This is a big step forward because a retailer’s impact on sustainable seafood production is only as good as its actual practices. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Now all of Canada’s major retailers, except Costco, are actively participating in Seafood Progress and disclosing performance against their commitment.

    Other notable improvements include Federated Cooperatives Limited’s (“Co-op”) decision to start labelling all of its fresh and frozen seafood products with scientific name, geographic origin, method of production and whether it’s farmed or wild – information that is essential for consumers who want to know what they’re eating and where it came from. METRO, which already has the traceability and labelling in place to support that level of detail for its fresh, frozen and shelf stable products (like canned tuna, tins of anchovies or jars of clams), recently expanded its traceability requirements to all of its sushi suppliers.

    For the first time this year, SeaChoice examined how much of a retailer’s seafood is covered by its sustainable seafood commitment. For some retailers, it’s much less than you might think.

    Figure 2: How many retailers include which segments under the scope of their seafood commitment or policy.

    We found that most retailers’ commitments focus on fresh and frozen products from their own grocery store brands, leaving out large volumes of shelf stable seafood and products from well-known seafood company brands such as Birds Eye, High Liner or Clover Leaf. So, if you’re one of the many people who stocked up on canned tuna during the past few months, there’s a good chance this wasn’t sourced in line with the retailers’ seafood commitment since only two out of eight retailers’ commitments include all shelf stable seafood products.

    SeaChoice is encouraging retailers to increase the scope of their commitments so that all of the seafood products they sell, in all of their stores, are being sourced responsibly – not just those that are easiest or most convenient. Because seafood harvested by way of unsustainable fishing practices and potential human rights abuses has no place in Canadian grocery stores.

    You can help make that happen by visiting SeafoodProgress.org to see what your retailer is doing to support sustainable seafood. Tweeting your retailer or speaking with a store associate or customer service representative is another good way to show that you care about what they’re doing – or not doing.