Evaluation and legal assessment of certified seafood

Abstract

Seafood counters used to be simpler places, where a fish was labeled with its name and price. Nowadays, it carries more information than a used-car listing. Where did it swim? Was it farm-raised? Was it ever frozen? How much harm was done to the ocean by fishing it?Many retailers tout the environmental credentials of their seafood, but a growing number of scientists have begun to question whether these certification systems deliver on their promises. The labels give customers a false impression that purchasing certain products helps the ocean more than it really does, some researchers say.Backers respond that they are helping transform many of the globe's wild-caught fisheries, giving them a financial incentive to include environmental safeguards, while giving consumers a sense of what they can eat with a clear conscience.To add to the confusion, there are a variety of certification labels and guides, prompting retailers to adopt a hybrid approach, relying on multiple seafood rating systems or establishing their own criteria and screening products that way.As of Sunday, for example, Whole Foods stopped selling seafood listed as "red" by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute -including octopus, gray sole and Atlantic halibut -because these species are overfished or caught in a way that harms ocean habitat or other species. The move has sparked criticism from New England fishermen, who are now barred from selling to the upscale chain. Whole Foods also sells only pole-or line-caught canned tuna, which harms fewer species than conventional tuna-fishing methods.Target no longer sells farmed salmon -which has come under fire for consuming a disproportionate amount of forage fish and creating several other problems -and has pledged that by 2015 it will sell only fresh and frozen fish that are "sustainable and traceable." Wegmans said it will not obtain seafood from the Ross Sea in the Antarctic, which many environmentalists say should be off-limits to fishing, and this fall it will start selling oysters from plots it has leased in the Chesapeake Bay as part of a fishery restoration project. Beginning in June, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest seafood retailer, will require all of its fresh and frozen wild-caught and farmed seafood to be certified by a third party as sustainable or have a plan in place for suppliers to be certified. At this point, 76 percent of its suppliers are certified.Blue Ocean Institute President Carl Safina, a scientist who published the first sustainability rankings for commonly eaten fish in 1998, said that a decade ago, eating a piece of fish was akin to eating a piece of bread."You just picked it up and ate it. It wasn't subject to any discussion or inquiry," he said. "Now it's a broad discussion about where it came from, about whether it's sustainable. This is enormous progress compared to the change we've made to any other form of food production in the same amount of time."The most stringent and commonly used certification is that of the Marine Stewardship Council, which has cert...

Can Consumers Understand Sustainability through Seafood Eco-Labels? A U.S. and UK Case Study

“…Of all wild capture marine eco-labels, the MSC has likely been reviewed the most to determine its effectiveness in rebuilding marine fish stocks [33][34][35][36]. Froese et al reviewed several fisheries certified by the MSC and Friends of the Sea (FOS).…”

“…Froese et al reviewed several fisheries certified by the MSC and Friends of the Sea (FOS). For stocks with available information, and defining overfished as stock size reduced below maximum sustainable yield, they found that 19% of the FOS and 31% of the MSC fisheries were overfished or subject to overfishing [33]. Agnew et al presented a rebuttal to this analysis.…”

Eco-certification of Farmed Seafood: Will it Make a Difference?

“…Organization (IFFO), are becoming more numerous but are not yet producing sufficient amounts of fishmeal and oil to supply the eco-certified aquaculture sector. While outside the scope of this article, earlier study on eco-certification of capture fisheries (including forage fisheries) has revealed weaknesses in the content of the standards and also in the implementation and evaluation of certification schemes for capture fisheries (Jacquet et al 2010;Stokstad 2011;Froese and Proelss 2012). A focus on carnivorous species in eco-certification programs without addressing the feed issue at a more sectoral level could do more harm than good for the environmental performance of the sector.…”

Impact of the natural mortality (M) variability on the evaluation of the exploitable stock of sardine, Sardina pilchardus (Actinopterygii: Clupeiformes: Clupeidae) of the central region of the Algerian coast

“…Based on the recommendations of Froese and Proelss (2012) (Table 9), we noticed that due to variation in natural mortality from 0.91 yr -1 Pauly (1980) to 0.49 yr -1 Djabali et al (1994), the sardine stock in the central region of the Algerian coast changed from a state of not overfished and not overfishing to a state of overfished and overfishing (Table 9).…”