• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

All of these problems troubled not only economists and environmentalists but also some leaders of the seafood industry itself. Among the latter were executives of Unilever, one of the world’s largest buyers of frozen fish, whose products were familiar to consumers under the brand names of Gorton in the U.S. (subsequently sold by Unilever), Birdseye Walls and Iglo in Britain, and Findus and Frudsa in Europe. The executives became concerned that fish, the commodities that they bought and sold, were in steep decline throughout the world, just as the timber company executives who launched the Forest Stewardship Council became concerned about the steep decline of forest. Hence in 1997, four years after the establishment of the FSC, Unilever teamed up with World Wildlife Fund to found a similar organization termed the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Its goal was to offer credible eco-labeling to consumers, and to encourage fishermen to solve their own tragedies of the commons by the positive incentive of market appeal rather than the negative incentive of threatened boycotts. Other companies and foundations, plus international agencies, have now joined Unilever and World Wildlife Fund in funding the MSC.

In Britain the companies besides Unilever that support the MSC or buy its certified seafood products include Young’s Bluecrest Seafood Company, Britain’s largest seafood company; Sainsbury’s, Britain’s largest fresh food supplier; the supermarket chains Marks and Spencer, and Safeway; and the Boyd Line, which operates a fleet of fishing trawlers. U.S. supporters include Whole Foods, the world’s largest retailer of natural and organic foods, plus Shaw’s supermarkets and Trader Joe’s markets. Among supporters elsewhere are Migros, which is Switzerland’s largest food retailer, and Kailis and France Foods, a large operator of fishing boats, factories, markets, and exports in Australia.

The criteria that the MSC applies to fisheries were developed in consultation between fishermen, fisheries managers, seafood processors, retailers, fishery scientists, and environmental groups. The principal criteria are that the fishery should maintain its fish stock’s health (including the stock’s sex and age distribution and genetic diversity) for the indefinite future, should yield a sustainable harvest, should maintain ecosystem integrity, should minimize impacts on marine habitats and on non-targeted species (the by-catch), should have rules and procedures for managing stocks and minimizing impacts, and should comply with prevailing laws.

Seafood companies bombard the consuming public with widely differing claims, some of them deceptive or confusing, about the supposed environmental benignness of their fishing practices. Hence the essence of the MSC, as of the FSC, is independent third-party certification. Again as with the FSC, the MSC accredits several certifying organizations, rather than carrying out certifying audits itself. Application for certification is completely voluntary: it’s up to a company to decide if it thinks that the benefits of certification would warrant the cost. For the smaller fisheries seeking assessment, a foundation called the David and Lucille Packard Foundation now contributes to paying those costs through the Sustainable Fisheries Fund. The process begins with a confidential pre-assessment of the applying company by the certifying organization, then (if the company still wants to be audited) comes a full assessment typically requiring one or two years (up to three years for big complicated fisheries) and specifying issues that must be addressed. If the audit is favorable and the specified issues are resolved, the company receives certification for five years but is subject each year to an audit without prior notification. Those annual audit results are posted on a public website and get scrutinized and often challenged by interested parties. Experience shows that most companies, once they have received MSC certification, are