By Atuna.com
These days, eco-labels are becoming such a common feature on wild and farmed seafood products that in some seafood sectors it can be a headache to navigate the variety of claims. Some players in the seafood industry feel there is a need to reduce the confusion on some seafood products with a new project that will benchmark sustainable certification programs. This is happening despite the trend in which MSC seems to be emerging as the leading and dominant global standard for wild sustainable seafood.
“There’s a lot of different ways these programs are organized and there’s a lot of discussion about it, but there’s no common methodology for benchmarking certifications,†says Herman Wisse, consultant for the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative (GSSI).
The GSSI aims to make a common set of criteria, using international guidelines, to define the expectations of a certification scheme and to verify that the standards are being met. The exact framework for the benchmark has yet to be determined since contracts with potential members are still being finalized, says Wisse. The project is expected to officially start in November or December, and it will take about a year to create the organization’s structure and for the engaged stakeholders to develop the benchmark.
The core group who first proposed and funded the concept is made up of the Dutch retailer Royal Ahold, the German-based Metro Group, the U.S.-based National Fisheries Institute, and the New England Aquarium. This core group has taken the lead in preparing the project, however once the GSSI officially starts all contributing stakeholders will form an equal part of the process, says Wisse.
Currently, at least 24 parties have expressed interest in the initiative, including major supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’s and Morrisons in the UK, Loblaws and Sobey’s in Canada, and U.S. tuna brand Bumble Bee. Bumble Bee is also a member of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) and its CEO is the current chair of the ISSF.
Last month, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) – widely regarded as a robust and rigorous certification scheme – welcomed the GSSI proposal with “caution.â€
“There is an indisputable need for truly independent review and ranking of the services and claims being made by the various programs, as well as a mechanism to ensure quality control among the programs,†MSC said in a statement.
The eco-label believes the various programs should be graded against a scale, rather than a simple pass/fail system, to recognize the best performers and to drive improvement. The group also stressed the importance of meaningful standards in addition to the process programs use to apply them, citing that early GSSI documents reference compliance only against the FAO Guidelines for Eco-labeling Fish and Fisheries Products from Marine Capture Fisheries. MSC wants the GSSI benchmark system to be broadened to include other FAO guidelines.
The main eco-labels in the global tuna sector to be reviewed would potentially be: MSC, Friend of the Sea, pole & line logos and the many dolphin-safe and dolphin-friendly logos used. The GSSI effort would also be looking at various aquaculture certification programs.
Recently, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) free school skipjack fisheries were MSC certified, but so far no product has been supplied to the marketplace.
While the shape of the GSSI benchmark is still unknown, there also remains another mystery: how companies are going to translate the GSSI approval to their consumers. With MSC now emerging as the dominant wild catch sustainable certification, it’s becoming clear which standard consumers should follow. The question is what will happen to consumer perception if retailers or brands start to introduce one or two new competing sustainability logos, which meet GSSI criteria but are hardly known by the public.
“GSSI is not aiming to add another logo or claim on the package, as there are already a multitude of claims and logos being used,†says Wisse.