A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 1 A RECIPE FOR CHANGE Supermarkets respond to the challenge of sourcing sustainable seafood A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 2 CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 4 2 MARKS & SPENCER 7 3 WAITROSE 12 4 SAINSBURY’S 17 5 CO-OP 21 6 ASDA 25 7 MORRISONS 29 8 TESCO 33 9 SOMERFIELD 38 10 ICELAND 41 11 CONCLUSIONS AND NEW CHALLENGES 43 APPENDIX 1 – GLOSSARY 47 APPENDIX 2 – COMMON AND SCIENTIFIC NAMES OF SOME SEAFOOD SPECIES 50 REFERENCES 52 A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 3 Beam trawler, Dogger Bank, North Sea: 70% of the catch from beam trawlers is thrown away, dead or dying. © Greenpeace/Reynaers A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 4 INTRODUCTION 1.1 An industry in transition • Sainsbury’s has made great strides this year with its – the rise of sustainable seafood new seafood sourcing policy, which applies vigorous environmental standards to all the seafood it sells. The new The seafood industry is changing rapidly. Standards and practices policy has led the company to delist skate from all its stores, established long ago for the catching, processing and selling of foregoing its annual turnover of £650,000. seafood are adapting to meet a new and demanding criterion – that of sustainability. In the last year alone, businesses the length of the • ASDA adopted a comprehensive sustainable seafood policy seafood supply chain in the UK, Europe and beyond have begun to in January 2006, which led to the immediate delisting of seriously address the crisis taking place in our oceans – as a result of dogfish, Dover sole and skate. Later in the year the retailer destructive fishing methods and sheer overfishing. stopped selling any cod caught in the North Sea. In its most exciting and challenging commitment so far, ASDA has In October 2005, Greenpeace launched its report: A recipe for also committed to selling only Marine Stewardship Council disaster – Supermarkets’ insatiable appetite for seafood, which (MSC)-certified fresh and frozen fish within five years. challenged the seafood industry, particularly the major retailers, to begin the process of ensuring that all the seafood they sell • Morrisons has also adopted a new sustainable seafood comes from sustainable sources.1 In just one year, most of the sourcing policy and has made a serious commitment UK’s major retailers have engaged in this process – removing to continue addressing sustainability issues over the from sale some of the most destructively-fished species, coming years. increasing their range of better-managed stocks and engaging constructively in finding sustainable solutions for many of the ‘The principle of sustainable seafood most commonly stocked species. has moved from press release piety ‘Love them or hate them, environmental to serious commitment.’ groups have radically changed your Kit Davies, The Grocer, April 20063 industry… It looks like 2006 will be the Change is not limited to the UK sector. In response to similar year sustainability finally took a firm reports released by Greenpeace in Austria and France, the hold on the seafood industry.’ seafood industry is also beginning to change on the continent. In Austria, many of the largest retailers and wholesalers have Drew Cherry, IntraFish, March 20062 actively engaged with Greenpeace on the issue – with several adopting new sustainable seafood policies. Shark has now been Among the many changes that have occurred, some notable delisted from every retail chain. Meanwhile, in France, retailer advances in the sustainability of UK seafood retail in 2006 include Auchan has also adopted a new sustainability policy. Among the following: other measures, the company will no longer sell wild-caught sea bass between December and March – to avoid the species’ • M&S and Waitrose have remained leaders in the sustainable spawning season – and will actively encourage consumers seafood market. M&S has continued to run its seafood operation to buy seafood species from better-managed sources. The to best practice standards and has been a powerful advocate movement is even taking hold in the USA, where retail giant for sustainability in the seafood industry. Meanwhile, Waitrose Wal-Mart has committed to ensuring that all its fresh and has raised the benchmark for standards in fishing practice by frozen fish is MSC-certified within three years. Over the committing to remove all beam-trawled products from its coming months, Greenpeace aims to extend the challenge to shelves by the end of 2007. the seafood industries in a number of the Nordic countries. A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 5 1.2 Changes in public attitude ecosystems.7 In particular, wild-caught fish are used for fishmeal and fish oil to feed farmed stocks; disease and pollution from This is not simply an industry-led revolution. The changes intensively farmed fish further impact wild stocks and surrounding taking place are being demanded and supported by the ecosystems; and many aquaculture practices are associated with majority of European consumers. Research polls carried out poor human rights records. for the Seafood Choices Alliance in 2005 revealed that 79% of people consider the environmental impacts of seafood to be Year after year, massive quantities of seafood continue to be an important factor in their purchasing decisions.4 The same removed from the ocean. If the seafood industry is serious about research showed that 86% of those surveyed would prefer to addressing sustainability, it must acknowledge that the world’s fish buy seafood reliably labelled as environmentally responsible, stocks cannot cope indefinitely with this relentless strip-mining. and 40% would be willing to pay an extra 5–10% more for such The level of responsibility and the size of the challenges facing products. The seafood industry would do well to take notice of retailers and the other major players in the seafood industry have these indications of changing consumer demand. never been greater. Much has been achieved in 2006, but harder and more complex challenges in sourcing sustainable seafood lie ‘All this adds up to an unavoidable message ahead. It remains to be seen if the UK’s major supermarkets can for fishermen – jump on the bandwagon continue to meet these challenges. before you get left behind. We can all complain endlessly about the power of the 1.4 In this report green movement, but it cannot be stopped Almost a year has passed since Greenpeace first challenged the and it is now having a real impact in the major UK retailers to ensure that the seafood they sell is sustainable. market place.’ A recipe for change – Supermarkets respond to the challenge Fishing News, March 20065 of sourcing sustainable seafood is a review of the progress that supermarkets have made on this issue over the last 12 months. In the main body of the report, the new policies of each supermarket are reviewed in detail. In the final chapter, we assess this information 1.3 The challenge ahead and present the updated league table of supermarket performance. Change is under way and is gathering pace, but there is still much to Finally, this report demands stronger commitments within be done to ensure that the world’s oceans and the ecosystem within supermarkets’ sustainable seafood policies by calling for action on them are protected from excessive and destructive fishing. two urgent issues. Supermarkets must: The global demand for seafood continues to rise, placing ever- 1. Take action to radically improve the UK skate fisheries or stop greater demands on the finite resources in our oceans.6 As many of selling skate altogether. the more popular fish stocks are run down from our near shores, fishing moves into deeper waters. Larger and more powerful fishing 2. Stop selling seafood species that are caught by one of the most vessels, equipped with bigger nets and state-of-the-art fish- destructive fishing methods – beam trawling. finding technology, allow fishermen to take previously unfished species from the high seas. ‘All credit to Greenpeace for identifying the Aquaculture, often promoted as being the solution to sustainable fisheries, has undergone a massive growth over the last 50 years. simple thing each of us can do to fight back Unfortunately, with the exception of some shellfish-aquaculture against the threat to the oceans.’ practices and freshwater fish reared in ponds, most aquaculture 8 exacerbates the pressures placed on over-exploited marine Max Hastings, The Guardian, October 2005 A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 6 Skipjack tuna, Solomon Islands, Pacific Ocean: The livelihood of local fishermen is threatened by global overfishing. © Greenpeace/Behring-Chisholme A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 7 2005 RANK & GRADE 2006 RANK & GRADE MARKS & SPENCER 1 ‘Quality & trust’ 1 2.1 M&S’s background and farming (particularly salmon and warm-water prawns). Since 2003, M&S’s goals and achievements in seafood Marks & Spencer (M&S) began in 1884 as Marks’ market stall at sustainability have been outlined each year in its annual the Kirkgate market in Leeds. The M&S partnership was formed in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports,14 and its website 1894 and became a limited company in 1926. Fresh produce and includes in-depth customer information on its seafood canned food were introduced in 1931.9 policies, with pictures and detailed descriptions of its chilled fish fillets range.15 M&S is now one of the UK’s leading retailers of clothing, foods, homeware and financial services, serving 15 million customers a M&S is the only supermarket chain to employ a qualified week in 450 UK stores, and employing 65,000 people. Of these fisheries scientist to manage seafood sourcing. As M&S does stores, 177 are M&S ‘Simply Food’ outlets – with food accounting not sell any other brands, every piece of seafood it sells – from for 45.2% of the company’s UK sales.