In a global first, a shareholder activism campaign targeting farmed salmon was launched this month in Australia. It’s a groundbreaking move that has the potential to shake up the sustainable seafood realm, worldwide, where the majority of efforts to date have centered around market-based incentives and large financial investors.
The Save the Skate campaign is aimed at Australia’s two largest supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, calling on them to stop procuring farmed salmon from Macquarie Harbour farms that are considered a “catastrophic” threat to the endangered Maugean Skate.
Individual investors, unless they’re billionaires, typically lack influence over companies and their boards. But working together, small shareholders can have a big influence over the social and environmental practices of companies. SIX (Sustainable Investment Exchange) will rally more than 100 shareholders to drive forward the proposals, corporate engagement, and necessary interventions to achieve a positive outcome for the skate.
Shareholder activism is a strategy of strength in numbers – and it works.
Need convincing? SIX lists some examples where shareholder activism has achieved big results:
“In the last year Apple has agreed to report on union rights and Visa has promised to provide more details about its gender and racial pay disparities. A few years ago activist fund manager Engine no.1 installed 3 new board directors at Exxon despite holding only 0.02% of the company shares. Tulipshare was able to get a 44% vote for a resolution supporting factory worker rights at Amazon, even though its supporting shareholders held just $42,000 of shares in the USD$1.6 Trillion company.”
The number of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder activism campaigns have been on the rise in recent years. Most have centered around climate action and human rights. Some activism has begun around ocean plastic commitments, and past wins include Starbucks and McDonalds phasing out plastic straws.
But shareholder activism in the sustainable seafood space is new – and long overdue.
Back in 2022, Loblaw faced pressure from shareholders to publish supply chain audit records in light of concerns the company could be importing textile products with ties to Uyghur forced labor. While the motion did not pass, activist shareholders vowed to refile if the company and board failed to take appropriate action.
Late last year, Outlaw Ocean exposed a number of grocers (including Loblaw) and seafood brands with ties to Uyghur forced labor in Chinese seafood processing plants. Whether stakeholder activists in the publicly traded companies take up the cause remains to be seen.
Fortunately, with the launch of the Save the Skate shareholder campaign, we are hopeful that a wave of similar actions to do with sustainable and socially responsible seafood will begin worldwide.
The Save the Skate campaign is the first shareholder activism campaign to hold major companies to account for unsustainable seafood procurement. It is also likely the first shareholder activism centered around a species extinction emergency. Significantly, eco-certifications are also implicated within the campaign, as supermarkets rely on flawed farmed salmon certifications to sell Macquarie Harbour salmon as “responsible” to shoppers.
As part of our watchdogging of global farmed salmon certifications, SeaChoice member group Living Oceans has been leading the call for the BAP and GLOBALG.A.P. certifications to drop their endorsement of Macquarie Harbour farmed salmon. Living Oceans is also one of the collaborators of the SIX campaign.
Stay tuned to see what waves will be made in the shareholder activism X sustainable seafood space by subscribing to the SeaChoice newsletter.
