From Retail Partnerships to Seafood Progress

Since our founding in 2006 through to 2016, SeaChoice focused on educating consumers and providing informative resources on seafood sustainability to businesses throughout the seafood supply chain. One of our primary initiatives was working directly with Canadian retailers to establish sustainable seafood purchasing policies, and to implement market-facing sustainable seafood programs. At the end of 2016, our partners included Buy-Low Foods, Federated Co-Op, Nesters Market, Safeway, The Big Carrot, and Whole Foods. We also partnered with Overwaitea Foods for six years.

SeaChoice’s retailer partnerships have successfully shifted seafood procurement away from unsustainable sources over the past decade, and developed programs to raise consumer awareness of sustainable seafood options in Canada. For some examples, you can read about the great progress made by Buy-Low Foods, Safeway, The Big Carrot, and Federated Co-operatives Limited.

As of December 2016, we are proud to say that our retail partners had either met, or almost met, the commitments outlined in their sustainable seafood policies.

We value and congratulate our retail partners for their important efforts to date, and for their ongoing commitment to sustainable seafood procurement and consumer education.

SeaChoice partners made significant progress, but collectively, they represented only a very small portion of seafood sales in the overall Canadian marketplace, where significant seafood sustainability challenges remain. In this context, we made the strategic decision to shift to a new approach, to encourage further improvements to fisheries and aquaculture practices. We have now moved from engaging in direct retail partnerships to working to consolidate and leverage retailer influence across Canada, and addressing ongoing issues related to sustainable seafood production and supply.

Seafood Progress was born from the need to ensure sustainable seafood commitments are robust and transparent, and to support continued improvement and progress in sustainable seafood procurement across Canada. Seafood Progress will encourage Canadian retailers to maintain and improve the current rigour of their sustainable seafood programs.

Corporate social responsibility requires a certain degree of openness and transparency with the public. Whatever an organization’s disposition towards sustainability may be, there is a growing demand for companies to be more transparent with their approach to environmental and social issues and corporate governance. There is also increasing evidence that corporate disclosure and transparency of sustainability data can help realize positive change. Seafood Progress aims to support this shift towards greater transparency and offers a platform for companies to profile their corporate social responsibility policies as they relate to seafood.

The Seafood Progress website was launched in 2018 and is available here.