21 October 2013
Italy
Friend of the Sea (FOS) has bitten back after it was hit by criticism from environmental organization, Greenpeace. FOS Founder, Paolo Bray, has reacted to comments from Greenpeace that have questioned its stringency of environmental standards and transparency surrounding tuna fishing.
Paolo Bray - FOS/EII
In an article by seafoodsource.com, Bray, who is also European Director of the regularly criticized Dolphin Safe program of the Earth Island Institute, branded the criticism as “off the mark†and said that it has been five years since the organization had made or published any assessments on his company. Friend of the Sea is an international certification project for products originating from both sustainable fisheries and aquaculture.
“Greenpeace also supports very weak sustainability certification projects such as FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), criticized by several other NGOs,†said Bray.
“Greenpeace’s vision and campaigns on sustainable fisheries has often proved to be based on wrong scientific assumptions, such as the pro pole and line and against FADs campaigns. Tuna RFMOs (Regional Fishery Management Organizations) scientific data indeed shows that the two fishing methods catch the same level of juveniles.†Bray did not refer to other by-catch of non-tuna species.
The FOS / EII director outlined that he believes Greenpeace “is not in a position to assess some other NGOs which operate much more in-depth and science based assessments of fisheries operations. Nevertheless, we always take into consideration valid criticism and undertake necessary improvement measure where necessary.â€
