A former SeaChoice partner, Federated Co-op has continued to make improvements by taking their commitment to sustainable seafood seriously.
Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) provides procurement and distribution of products to member co-operatives (“Co-op” stores) across Western Canada. SeaChoice partnered with FCL in 2010 and saw them make great gains in terms of increasing the sustainability of their seafood procurement. For example, FCL reduced the proportion of “Avoid” red-ranked seafood from 45% in 2013 to just 17% by the end of 2016. FCL achieved this by removing all red-ranked Canadian Atlantic Cod, shifting almost all uncertified shrimp to certified sustainable sources, swapping red-ranked Russian caught King Crab for green-ranked Alaskan sources (pictured above), and introducing green-ranked, land-based West Creek farmed Coho salmon. FCL have also worked to improve their seafood labeling by including more information on packaging and working with suppliers to develop better traceability for some types of seafood (such as rockfish) to make sure their products are coming from well-managed stocks.
When SeaChoice announced it would be pivoting from direct retailer partnerships to a Canada-wide sustainable seafood watchdog role, we were delighted that FCL showed its clear commitment to seafood sustainability by investing in the internal resources necessary to keep collecting sustainability data and continuing to improve its seafood procurement practices.
FCL’s Sustainable Seafood Policy is structured around the six steps of the Common Vision for Sustainable Seafood, a guiding document developed by leading environmental organizations across North America that outlines the steps businesses should take to develop robust sustainable seafood commitments. This helps ensure the commitment is well rounded and up-to-date with salient and emerging issues.
The Common Vision is also the basis for the assessment framework within Seafood Progress. FCL was very collaborative and provided useful feedback on the application of the principles in the Common Vision when SeaChoice was developing Seafood Progress.
FCL’s Seafood Progress profile shows that it is currently performing above average on Steps 1, 2 and 3, and at or slightly below average on Steps 4, 5, and 6. This profile can help FCL identify where to focus its attention next as it continues to strive for improvement and as the seafood industry as a whole develops a better understanding of the environmental and social responsibility aspects of the global seafood trade.
SeaChoice will be developing recommendations for all of the retailers profiled in Seafood Progress for how that retailer could utilize their market leverage to drive sustainability improvements down the seafood supply chain. We hope that when we update the Seafood Progress assessments next year, we will see further improvements by the industry as a whole towards best practices.
