Canada’s retailers have commitments to source sustainable seafood but often we have no idea if they are actually living up to them.
Do you know what your retailer’s policy is on sourcing seafood? Every retailer has one, and these policies determine what steps, if any, the retailer is taking to make sure the seafood products it sells are environmentally sustainable and socially responsible – meaning that the people who produce them are getting fair wages and working conditions. Perhaps tellingly, not all retailers are transparent about how well they are living up to their policy and if they are actually sourcing products in line with their commitments.
SeaChoice designed Seafood Progress to help you find out. Seafood Progress looks at several aspects of transparency, from the general, such as “does the retailer have a publicly available commitment or policy to source more environmentally sustainable seafood?”, to the specific, such as “has the retailer published information about the fisheries/farms they source their products from?”. It assesses Canada’s largest seafood retailers on their commitments – what they say they are doing on seafood sustainability and what we know they are actually doing. This is because actions, not words, are the most important indicators of whether retailers are supporting good or bad environmental and social responsibility practices through their sourcing decisions.
Interestingly, all of Canada’s major retailers have made a public commitment to source more sustainable seafood; a consistency we didn’t see with any other commodities when we scrutinized the retailers’ websites. However, retailers’ environmental sustainability commitments vary considerably in their level of detail, use of credible external standards or seafood sustainability assessments, and reference to timelines for meeting their commitments. Even more variable were retailers’ commitments to source socially responsible seafood and their commitments to improve traceability of products in their seafood supply chains. With no publicly available information on either of these indicators and our requests for information unanswered, some retailers scored zero.
Out of all the major Canadian retailers, Seafood Progress reveals that only Buy-Low Foods, Federated Cooperatives Limited (“Co-op”), Loblaw, Safeway and Save-On Foods regularly publish information on how much of their procurement meets their commitment. That said, no Canadian retailers are currently disclosing which fisheries or farms they buy their seafood from – something that some British and American retailers have started doing either independently or through initiatives like the Ocean Disclosure Project.
Many Canadians are concerned about the social implications of their seafood, for example whether it was caught by modern day slaves, but only some retailers are transparent about their actions to address this critical issue. Four retailers – Buy-Low Foods, Loblaw, METRO, and Save-On Foods – told us that their suppliers have all signed a Code of Conduct requiring them to uphold all aspects of the retailer’s commitments. And only three retailers – Loblaw, METRO and Walmart Canada – have social responsibility commitments that reference international standards and include clear actions or expectations on their suppliers to do everything they can to ensure that human rights abuses play no part in their supply chain.
SeaChoice has followed up with every retailer profiled in Seafood Progress with recommendations for how they could improve their scores by working closer to best practice, and many of these recommendations are related to transparency. Transparency about what retailers are doing, or requiring their suppliers to do, is important so that you can be sure that you’ll be able to buy seafood long into the future, without compromising the rights and dignity of people who work to get it to your plate.
This year, Canada’s major seafood retailers scored an average of 37 out of a possible 100 on Seafood Progress’s transparency step; there is room for improvement. In early 2019, SeaChoice will be reaching out to retailers again to review their Seafood Progress profiles and see what has changed; we’ll update the profiles accordingly. We are hoping that retailers will score better when it comes to transparency around their procurement practices, especially in disclosing how their procurement is meeting their commitment and their social responsibility actions.
In the meantime, check out your retailers’ profiles and let them know you care about the transparency of their sustainable seafood actions. There is a button on every retailer’s profile so that you can quickly and easily write a tweet to them that will help bring this message home.
