reLAKSation 280. Callander McDowell
Which bandwagon?: It used to be so easy – all one had to reflect on was what is the meaning of life. Now, there are so many more unanswered questions for one to ponder. Should one buy organic seafood or is it better to buy seafood that is sustainable or is it preferable to buy local and when one refers to local, what does that mean?
The whole question of sustainable seafood has been raised this week with the Seafood Summit in Jacksonville Florida hosted by Seafood Choices Alliance. Speaking on IntraFish TV, Howard Johnson of H M Johnson Associates said that the summit has grown from a closed gathering of a few conservation groups and other NGO’s to the current large meeting involving much of the mainstream industry. He added that the industry began to attend when they started to hear much more about sustainability from within the supply chain rather from their actual customers.
This view echoed that expressed by Mike Sutton of Monterey Bay Aquarium, who was responsible for establishing the Marine Stewardship Council with Unilever and the WWF. Mr Sutton said that it was important to recognise that the move to sustainable seafood was not consumer driven. Instead he said that it was driven by enlightened self interest of corporations. This self interest should then provide consumers with better choices enabling them to feel better. Businesses recognise that sustainability is therefore good for them and also good for the planet.
Mr Sutton said that whilst the environmental groups might have put sustainability on the radar, it is only when the buyers from big business start to take an interest, when everyone else sits up and pays attention. He highlighted that major companies like Sysco and Wal-Mart have made everyone else take note.
We, at Callander McDowell, find Wal-Mart to be an interesting example as the store group has also featured in the news this week with regard to sustainable seafood. The UK’s Asda supermarket group, part of Wal-Mart, announced that it has banned the sale of monkfish from all its stores (usual price £11.98/kg) by February 19th. It believes this is vital to save stocks of vulnerable fish and will not reconsider its decision until the industry takes appropriate action to ensure the long term future of monkfish stocks. Chris Brown, Sustainable and Ethical Sourcing Manager said that Asda are concerned about some of the catching methods used and the impact they have on the marine ecosystem. Oliver Knowles of Greenpeace believes that Asda’s decision will help the industry move away from beam trawling which he argues is a highly destructive method of fishing. Yet, according to Seafood intelligence.com, the Scottish Fisheries Federation has strongly criticised Asda because they have ignored the fact that the Scottish industry have been working closely with scientists to help protect UK’s monkfish stocks. He also pointed out that there is not one single beam trawler in Scottish fishing fleet.
So what has prompted Asda’s decision to ban monkfish? Prompted by Greenpeace’s rooftop action, last year Asda announced that it would bring its fish sourcing policies in line with its parent company Wal-Mart. Within three to five years, Asda would only stock fish certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. However, since this decision, it is Waitrose and Marks & Spencer’s which have been in receipt of all the positive publicity on sustainable sourcing. Asda clearly needed to raise its profile and the decision to ban sales of monkfish has done this. Asda’s Chris Brown said it was not an easy decision as it would initially cost the store sales. Yet, these financial implications may not be so great. Callander McDowell’s regular surveys of the retail section would suggest that Asda sells very little monkfish mainly because it is rarely stocked on their fish counters. This decision looks more like one of maximum impact for minimum loss.
Their quest for maximum publicity was increased by calling for celebrity chefs to drop monkfish from their menus. They even provided a list of their restaurants and the offending monkfish dishes. Chefs targeted included Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver and fish specialist Rick Stein.
Asda also highlighted that both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s sell monkfish but as the discrepancies with beam trawling has shown, they haven’t done their research since Tesco also sell monkfish and this week have placed it on promotion with savings of £5/kg bringing it in line with Asda’s price.
Asda say that their decision to only stock MSC products within five years will mean that dozens of products bearing the MSC’s blue label have started to appear on the supermarkets shelves. Certainly, MSC approved Alaskan salmon has replaced farmed salmon in a handful of products (a change which occurred when farmed salmon prices peaked) but the MSC logo has not yet really made an appearance on the fresh fish counter. One place the logo has made an appearance is outside the store. This week, Asda began to display a poster announcing the arrival of MSC seafood. The poster actually states ‘We’re proud to receive MSC certification – Our fish counters have been certified to sell products from well managed and sustainable fisheries which meet the environmental standards of the Marine Stewardship Council.’
Yet we thought that the point of the MSC was to certify fisheries and not stores. Reference to the MSC website as recommended by Asda fails to elicit any confirmation that Asda stores have been certified by the MSC. Even Asda’s own press release does not mention that their stores are certified by them. This supposed certification implies that all the fish sold on their fish counters meets the standards set by the Marine Stewardship, which clearly they don’t. In their press release, Asda mention that their best seller is MSC certified Pacific cod but fail to mention any other MSC approved fish sold from the counter. Instead they refer to species that appear on other NGO’s green lists including lemon sole, farmed turbot and Scottish langoustines. Farmed turbot did appear in Asda stores some months ago but after a brief appearance has since disappeared from the fish counter. It is interesting that Asda refer to farmed turbot since farmed fish are not included in the MSC remit. In fact, certifying farmed fish is something that the MSC has actively avoided.
Farmed fish and seafood can be a contentious issue where the environmentalists are concerned so it can be difficult to make informed and unbiased choices. For example, Asda list farmed turbot and say that it is on NGO’s green lists. The Marine Conservation Society mention that turbot is farmed but do not give it a clear green light. When it comes to farmed salmon the MSC recommend that only salmon grown organically or to Freedom Food standards should be eaten. Yet, other environmentalists say all farmed salmon should be avoided. Asda have not embraced such recommendations and actively sell farmed salmon from both Scotland and Norway. However, their poster implies that such salmon is certified by the MSC as it is sold from their fish counters. Asda have recently started to sell organic salmon, which is farmed either in Eire, Northern Ireland or the UK. This fish is only sold as a prepack and is not available from the fish counter.
Whilst the Marine Conservation Society has endorsed organic salmon, there has been a great deal of confusion and debate about organic seafood. Consumers find it hard to understand why fish which swim freely in the sea are not considered organic but fish which are farmed are. Certainly, whilst some NGO’s have approved organic fish, other environmentalists have condemned even organic fish simply because they are farmed and thus have some impact on the environment.
Whilst the debate over sustainable or organic seafood continues, a third parameter has now been brought into the equation; local produced food. Advocates of local food would argue that seafood cannot be considered to be sustainable or even organic, if it is shipped half way round the world gathering up huge amounts of food miles. In the UK, the Government have just doubled airport tax to offset the contribution to global warming caused by greenhouse gases from flying. Yet, whilst the public has to pay this environmental tax, air freight including fresh food is subjected to none. If a flight carrying the passengers is damaging to the environment so one bringing in fresh food must be just as damaging even if it is sustainable or organic.
According to IntraFish, Tesco plans to label all its food with information about food miles (the distance the food has travelled) could spell disaster for New Zealand’s seafood industry. Sealord Group’s Managing Director Doug MacKay said a look at the products carbon footprint would be fairer than branding food by the distance it travels. Tesco’s plan is intended to help customers distinguish between locally grown food and that shipped across great distances.
The real problem for customers is how local is local. Advocates of local food production often suggest that food produced within 50 miles should be considered local whilst others believe the distance should even be less. Certainly some farmers’ markets place limits on how far their stall holders should travel with 100 miles being the maximum if the product cannot be sourced nearer the market. With fish and seafood, this definition of local can cause a real headache for consumers since the distance from the sea, let alone a fishing port, is often much greater. Others suggest that local should be defined as within a county or state whilst others define local as produced within their country.
Placing the emphasis on local production would be a nightmare for some producers. For example, even if they considered local as country wide, Scottish salmon farmers would have difficulty in selling all their production to their countrymen, although this might be made easier if local was to include all the UK. Unfortunately many British consumers don’t get the choice. Fishupdate.com reported that exports of Scottish salmon are set to rise to over 12 million salmon despatched to over 60 different countries. This amounts to over 57,000 tonnes of salmon sent overseas yet clearly demand in the UK for salmon is growing and because the Scottish industry is focused on the export market, they have created a shortfall in local demand which must be met by imports from Norway. In terms of the environment, this would seem sheer madness with salmon being transported from Scotland to the Continent and beyond and then salmon imported back into the UK from Norway to be sold in Scotland.
Whilst transporting salmon around Europe appears to make little sense, it makes even less sense that consumers are being told that the sustainable choice is to buy MSC certified wild caught salmon from Alaska. How can it be sustainable to promote salmon that is shipped halfway round the world?
So what should consumers do? Should they buy sustainable, organic or local? We have no idea which has the least impact on the environment but clearly as the sustainable seafood movement rose out of concerns about the protection of stocks of wild fish, the only sensible approach is to buy seafood that is farmed. Once organisations like the Marine Stewardship Council recognises that the only way to relieve fishing pressure on wild stocks is to farm fish, can consumers then be given a real choice.