SeaChoice activated consumers to send over 2,000 emails to grocers and seafood brands in just three months, demanding they do more on sustainable and socially responsible seafood. 

Seafood Progress — an initiative introduced by SeaChoice five years ago to help drive accountability and transparency in seafood supply chains — has evolved significantly over the past year. Last year, SeafoodProgress.org expanded beyond grocers to include major seafood brands. SeaChoice shared the first-year results for brands with the public in May, followed by the fifth-year results for grocers in June. 

In tandem with this release, SeaChoice introduced a feature that allowed viewers to send custom emails directly from their profile pages to retailers and brands.

Unsurprisingly, 67 per cent of the messages sent called on major seafood brands and grocers to disclose more information on their product labels. 

This outcome indicates that consumers are increasingly frustrated by haphazard labelling of seafood products due to Canada’s weak regulatory requirements. This finding is consistent with SeaChoice’s polling results from November 2021, which found Canadians want stronger requirements and more information. However, SeaChoice’s 2022 Seafood Progress results reveal that, across the board, grocers are applying just over half the information they should to their seafood labels, and brands apply less than one-third. 

In other words….

Most of the seafood consumers buy is not being labelled with critical information, such as whether it is wild or farmed and where it was actually caught or farmed!

On a positive note, SeaChoice commends METRO for being the only grocer to receive a perfect score for its best practice labelling every year since 2018, and Rio Mare for being the only brand to have published a time-bound commitment to achieve best practice labelling by 2024. 

Consumers also advocated for more action to protect the people in seafood supply chains.

Over a quarter of the messages sent to grocers and seafood brands called out their weak commitments to protect the people in their seafood supply chains, as well as their lack of progress against commitments. The average score across all grocers in this area actually declined from 61 per cent in 2018 to 58 per cent in 2022. Additionally, the average score for brands in 2022 was disappointingly low at 35 per cent. 

SeaChoice expects brands and grocers to pay close attention to the messages sent to them by consumers, and hopes to see their reactions reflected in 2023 profile scores. Human rights abuses and poor practices at sea, on aquaculture farms and in processing plants continue to be reported. Grocers and brands have a responsibility to actively investigate their supply chains for such atrocities and remediate them to drive improvements upstream. 

If you didn’t get a chance to send your grocer or brand a message, you still can! Visit SeafoodProgress.org, select a brand or grocer, and click the orange “TAKE ACTION” button on their profile page. 

SeaChoice intends to run these email campaigns again in 2023 to encourage continued progress among brands and retailers and to raise awareness among consumers.