McDonald’s USA will become America’s first national restaurant chain to serve MSC-certified fish at all of its locations. This commitment marks a huge step in seafood sustainability for the U.S. food sector and it follows the successful lead of McDonald’s European restaurants, which began serving fish items with the signature blue logo in 2011, and received applause in those markets.
“We’re extremely proud of the fact that this decision ensures our customers will continue to enjoy the same great taste and high quality of our fish with the additional assurance that the fish they are buying can be traced back to a fishery that meets MSC’s strict sustainability standard,†says Dan Gorsky, McDonald’s senior vice president of U.S. supply chain and sustainability. The U.S. chain serves more than 25 million customers every day.
McDonald’s uses MSC certified wild-caught Alaska Pollock for its Filet-O-Fish sandwich and it will begin displaying the MSC ecolabel on product packaging, in-restaurant communications and external marketing next month. This will coincide with their soon-to-be-launched Fish McBites, which also uses wild-caught, MSC-certified Alaska Pollock.
The restaurant chain, known for its famous “Golden Arches,†is helping to meet growing seafood demands while maintaining the health of fish stocks for the future.
Under the MSC program, which is supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), all certified fisheries have been assessed by independent scientists against three core principles: the health of the fish stock, the impact of the fishery on the ecosystem and the management system that oversees the fishery.
Over 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants across the U.S. will serve the sustainably certified Alaska Pollock. Unlike its 7,000 European locations, the US branch currently does not offer salads with tuna as an ingredient.
However, one of McDonald’s main global competitors, Subway, does sell a popular tuna sub, but so far it has not made any public commitments towards seafood sustainability. Therefore, the market will be watching closely how other leading fast-food chains, which sell seafood, will react to this move by McDonald’s.
