Backgrounder

The Greenpeace report Protecting Our Oceans is Everyone’s Business: Ranking on Seafood Sustainability ranks Canada’s eight largest food retailers on the sustainability of their seafood procurement policies and practices. This is the fifth time Greenpeace Canada has published these rankings.

The 2014 results show progress by all retailers towards sourcing more sustainable seafood except Canada. Costco remains the only company without a score of 50 per cent or higher. Canada and Loblaw received the only green ratings this year (more than 71 per cent). The other six companies remain in the orange category (41-70 per cent). Both Canada Safeway and Metro jumped the most in score this year; over 10 points. Neither Overwaitea Food Group (OFG) and nor Costco responded to this year’s survey.

To get top marks (100 per cent), supermarkets must have strong, fully implemented policies that apply to all products that may contain marine ingredients, not sell any red-graded seafood and show leadership in improving the health of our oceans and improving fisheries and aquaculture.

Greenpeace has campaigned to improve the sustainability of seafood in the Canadian supermarket retail sector since 2008. At the beginning, none of the supermarkets had a sustainable seafood procurement policy and most did not see the need to increase accountability and transparency around seafood. All eight chains now are implementing a sustainability policy and making incremental steps towards achieving their stated goals.

Highlights from the 2014 report

General (company profiles found on pgs. 16-31)

-All retailers except Federated Co-operatives (FCL) and Costco Canada have finally applied their policy to all product categories that contain any marine ingredients.

- Metro is conducting DNA testing on seafood to ensure products are labeled properly, to verify traceability information and to combat seafood fraud. This complements Metro’s thorough labeling scheme of their house brand seafood.

- Loblaw is the first retailer to assess and seek more sustainable alternatives for its pet food and supplements category. In 2013, Loblaw became the first retailer in North America to offer pet food with MSC certified seafood ingredients.

- OFG, Canada Safeway, ( owned) and FCL replaced some of its red- graded tropical shrimp and prawns with a new SeaChoice green-graded Selva Shrimp product. The black tiger prawns are raised through Integrated Mangrove Forest Management in their natural habitat without any feed or chemical inputs by small-scale farmers in Southeast Asia.

- FCL has removed over a dozen species that are red-rated by SeaChoice and replaced them with yellow or green-rated products.

Farmed salmon (pg. 11)

- Greenpeace commissioned Stratcom to poll consumer behaviours and purchasing decisions related to salmon in general and unsustainable farmed salmon. The poll asked, “Thinking about the store or market where you buy most of your fish and seafood, if that establishment decided to only sell sustainable salmon products, removing unsustainably farmed salmon, would you continue to use it as your main source of fish/seafood?” Of those who shop at the major grocery chains, 77 per cent of salmon buyers said yes. Only 9.1 per cent said no. The full results of the poll can be found in the report.

- Safeway has begun to replace its net-pen farmed salmon with a more sustainable option from a closed containment, land-based salmon farm operation called Kuterra.

- Walmart’s latest policy edition notes support for closed containment salmon farm development.

Canned tuna (pg. 13)

- Canada Safeway, OFG, Loblaw, Metro, Walmart and Sobeys all have specific canned tuna sourcing requirements for their private label.

- Canada Safeway was the first major retailer to replace its private label skipjack with a more sustainable option. OFG, Loblaw and Metro all introduced one or more sustainable products.

- Walmart has adopted improved canned tuna sourcing requirements that apply to its national brand and private label products. FCL expanded its sustainability commitment to cover its private label canned tuna products.

Areas in need of improvement

Retailers are inconsistent in how they apply sourcing criteria to their private label and national brand products. Some are clear about setting clear timelines on discontinuing unsustainable products if the fishery or aquaculture operation does not improve, but it is vague for most.

- Internal audits are conducted in an attempt to verify chain of custody; however, independent third party audits of the companies’ sustainable seafood policies are not completed in full.

-Customers remain in the dark as most of the retailers do not share enough information on product labels about where and how the fish is caught or farmed.

Ocean Sanctuaries (pg. 9)

- A poll commissioned by Greenpeace early in 2014 revealed that Canadians overwhelmingly (94 per cent) think the federal government should protect at least 10 per cent of its coasts and marine areas. Further, a significant majority (78 per cent) think that this 10 per cent should be completely protected as no-take marine reserves.

-Today, less than 1 per cent of Canada’s marine waters, less than 1 per cent of the high seas and less than 3 percent of the global oceans, are fully protected.

- Greenpeace is campaigning for a network of no-take ocean sanctuaries that covers 40 per cent of the world's oceans, and is urging retailers to commit to not source from proposed or existing protected areas and to actively support the creation of more ocean sanctuaries.

- Through their policies some retailers including Metro and Walmart have expressed support for ocean sanctuaries. Others including Safeway, Metro and Sobeys say they will not source from certain areas. None have made a clear commitment to not source from all proposed and existing ocean sanctuaries.

- As part of the Save the Arctic campaign, Greenpeace is campaigning for the creation of an Arctic sanctuary in the high seas area of the Arctic Ocean, surrounding the North Pole.