SEAFOOD.COM NEWS (Editorial comment and Video) by John Sackton — August 6, 2013 — In a departure from our usual off the off-the-cuff practice I wrote a script for our video today on this issue, keying off our article featuring an interview with Keith Decker of High Liner foods. Here is a link to the Video, which is a less precise version. Below is the script:
The issue of seafood sustainability has evolved greatly over the past 15 years, and it is time for retailers and major packers to catch up.
The contradictions of the current state of seafood sustainability are increasingly manifest – when corporate policies, such as those of Walmart, produce absurd results.
Walmart’s policy – widely copied among retailers – is to sell only wild seafood that is MSC or equivalent, or in a fishery improvement project.
In an interview we publish today, Keith Decker of High Liner Foods says the same thing – High Liner is committed to having its seafood be certified as sustainable.
This works well in a simple world where the best managed fisheries do have an MSC label, and those fisheries which don’t qualify – because of lack of management, poor fleet practices, or other issues, can make the buyer grade by agreeing to an improvement project.
But what happens when some of the best managed fisheries leave the MSC. That is the situation in Alaska. It produced the absurd situation this week when Walmart said it was choosing Russian crab – rife with IUU problems and lack of management controls – because it was more "sustainable" than Alaska crab under its stated purchase policies.
Keith Decker says on the one hand, that his company is highly dependent on Alaska fisheries, and they are the best managed in the world. Then he also says High Liner will only buy certified seafood, or from fisheries in an improvement project.
This language – put in place largely through massive lobbying of retailers and other companies by NGO’s, results in an absurd situation – that of a company like Walmart telling Alaska, which has managed its fisheries as a world model for generations, that they must have an NGO approved ‘Fishery Improvement Project’ before they will meet the buyer guidelines.
If ever there was a story of the tail wagging the dog, this is it.
There is a simple solution, and companies like High Liner and many retailers are working on it. It is called the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative – or GSSI. Once it is in place, there should be a common standard for well managed and certified fisheries – some will be MSC, some may be certified by Global Trust under the FAO code – as is done in Alaska, and others may be certified differently – as in the tuna industry for example. But all would meet the retailer and producer standard of certified sustainable by a credible third party, to an acceptable standard.
The reason this is important is that fishery management works. What we have seen proven again and again in the past fifteen years is that when real management controls are put in place, wild fisheries can be sustainable, and can have acceptable environmental impacts. As Ray Hilborn is fond of pointing out, these impacts are universally less destructive of ecosystems than land based agriculture.
So why is there so much controversy over wild fisheries certification? If you look at aquaculture, where the MSC is not active, there is far less drama and controversy.
There is a far larger proportion of aquaculture production fully certified than wild fishery production. Aquaculture production is certified by the GAA, through its Best Aquaculture Practices, the ASC – Aquaculture Certification Council, and Global Gap, which all exist in relative harmony.
Retailers and foodservice buyers in different countries have different preferences. For example, most retailers in the US, including Walmart, and also major buyers like Darden, use BAP for aquaculture certification.
In Europe, there has been major support for ASC certification of Panagasius in Vietnam, including financial support. There is little public controvesy over which plan to use – that is largely a buyer determined choice.
The difference between wild fisheries and aquaculture is that in the aquaculture sector, NGO’s do not have a story line that massive destruction of the oceans or fisheries will take place unless fishing activity is curtailed. At one time, there was an issue with shrimp farms contributing to mangrove deforestation – but that is now a problem of the past, and most shrimp producing countries actively protect and extend mangrove forests.
So now that fisheries management has proven to work, when applied by governments such as those in the US, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Canada, and even Europe, can NGO’s abandon the disaster scenario?
That is a real question. The reason for the controversy in wild fisheries is that some NGO’s have an institutional need to remain at the center of the wild fisheries sustainability issue in order to support their fundraising and institutional goals. When wild fisheries are successful, they move the goal posts to say further improvement is now imperative – with the same urgency they used before.
So we get the spectacle of NGO’s demanding changes that are inconsistent with fisheries science. For example, Greenpeace initiated a campaign to protect habitat from pollock mid-water trawling in the Bering Sea Canyons. When NOAA did research on the habitat, they found it not to be different than other continental slope habitat, and therefore they did not impose new fishing restrictions to protect corals. That is because there are already large scale protections in place, and an essential habitat program to monitor and extend those protections as necessary.
But Greenpeace, and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, tried to make this a crisis by insisting to retailers that unless they took action as buyers, sustainability was threatened. So Greenpeace scores its retailers on whether they are writing letters or are sensitive to this issue. SFP said it would urge its partners to avoid pollock from this area in the Bering Sea, despite having no scientific basis for this advice.
These actions are no longer about sustainability – they are about perpetuating the NGO role as gatekeeper and arbiter of sustainability.
It is time for the industry to move on. There are plenty of ways that both buyers and producers in the seafood industry can act responsibly and meet their customer and brand requirements to be exceptional stewards of a common wild fisheries resource in a fragile ocean environment. It is just that they no longer need the NGO’s as arbiters of “sustainability.” Instead a common standard and and effective management and enforcement framework will do the trick. That is the lesson of the success of the last fifteen years.
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This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.