End Seafood Greenwash - update 30092021

I am writing to express my concern about the impact of your business’ sourcing of seafood. Scallop dredging is the <a href="http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v311/p1-14/">most damaging method of fishing</a> taking place in the UK’s seas and throughout the past several decades has been responsible for serious declines in the health of our marine environment. As well as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/icesjms/fsv099">significant harm to the seabed</a>, bottom-trawling for scampi leads to the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article-abstract/51/2/155/674474">wasteful discarding of large volumes of juvenile fish</a>. Scallops and scampi fisheries are <a href="https://www.mcsuk.org/goodfishguide/species/king-scallop/">red rated in a number of places</a> and yet claims of responsibility continue from those who source and profit from them. 
<p>Whilst I recognise that your company is involved in Fisheries Improvement Projects for at least one of these fisheries, these projects are not resulting in any changes in the way the fisheries operate on the water and appear to have lost any connection to the actual environmental condition of our seas - this is despite them operating for at least three years and <a href="https://crow-wrasse-edjy.squarespace.com/s/PUKFI-2-Scallop-PA-Final-250319.pdf">acknowledging these problems must be addressed</a>. Most shockingly the lack of progress is true even in addressing illegal and highly damaging fishing activity such as <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/the-illegal-industrial-fishing-damaging-scotlands-great-barrier-reef">dredging inside marine protected areas</a> and ending the wasteful practice of <a href="https://www.openseas.org.uk/news/report-highlights-illegal-discarding-in-scampi-industry/">discarding dead fish at sea</a></p>
<p>I am writing to ask that you, </p>
<ol>
<li>Ensure that any scallops or scampi your company is involved in selling or processing can be traced back to the specific trip-level locations at sea where they were caught and that this information is included in any sales packaging</li>
<li>Require that any scallops or scampi your company is involved in selling or processing are not dredged or trawled from sensitive marine environments or sourced from fisheries involved in illegal activity. </li>
</ol>
I believe these actions are reasonable and achievable. At a time when we are in both a climate and biodiversity crisis, these actions are the very least you can do to prevent things becoming even worse in our seas.

I would like to receive updates from Open Seas about this campaign

Where retailers are falling short

Many retailers selling seafood have enrolled in Fisheries Improvement Programmes, which allow them to display ‘responsibly sourced’ branding on their products. For customers, this can be misleading. These projects have been set up to address these issues with the support of the Marine Stewardship Council. However, these have yet to prevent environmental harm in our seas and damage to seabed habitats and other fisheries continues, sometimes illegally.

These projects talk around the problem, instead of taking action. In the meantime businesses such as Marks and Spencer, Youngs Seafood and Tesco claim that their involvement in the projects mean their sourcing is responsible. We think this is the very definition of greenwash.

Responsible sourcing means buying from responsible sources, ensuring that a business’ products do not come from environmentally harmful sources and is not funding damage. It is not something you do next year or the year after, once problems within your supply chain have been sorted out. It’s something that responsible businesses should act on and embed into their buying decisions today.

After a long time trying to encourage the seafood industry to take leadership and action (read our extended blog), we think it is now time to publicly call on these businesses to do the right thing and end seafood greenwash. Many companies will not act unless their boards of directors know the public – ie their customers – are watching and care about the implications of their buying decisions.

As a consumer you can also take other actions, by choosing to eat more sustainable fish and avoiding some of the most environmentally damaging seafood that is sourced irresponsibly from our seas. Until the problems are sorted out we are urging people to stop buying dredge-caught scallops and scampi from bottom-trawls. #EndSeafoodGreenwash.

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