Every St. Patrick’s Day swarms of Canadians take to the streets and local pubs dressed in their finest green attire, sipping green beer, wearing green face paint and even leprechaun hats to toast to St. Patrick or just to good times had by all. You’ll even see the odd young fella or wee lass dancing a jig to an Irish song, or at least an Irish-sounding Canadian knock-off. Well this St. Patrick’s Day Greenpeace is keeping up the green theme, no shocker there, and we’ve sent a special singing telegram fit with leprechauns, fiddle and all to two of Clover Leaf Seafoods' offices in hopes of charming the employees into greening the company's canned tuna!
With a gold four-leaf clover on the front of every can, you’d think that Clover Leaf customers were the luckiest of all. Unfortunately, that’s far from the case. Clover Leaf is currently Canada’s largest brand of unsustainable tuna, sourcing from fisheries that are wasteful, destructive to marine ecosystems, and often unfair to communities reliant on tuna for a major source of protein. Sharks, rays, other species of fish, turtles, baby tuna from vulnerable stocks like Redlisted bigeye and other marine life are being needlessly killed in purse seine fisheries that use Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) when lower impact alternatives already exist. What it comes down to is that Clover Leaf claims to be doing its part to green global tuna fisheries, but Redlisted tuna is still found in its cans.
But there’s a sea change in the global tuna industry, and a growing number of companies are taking the state of our oceans seriously and committing to do their part to change the industry’s destructive ways. Since all of the major brands in the UK committed to switch to 100 per cent FAD-free or pole and line caught tuna last year, leading Italian tuna brand Mareblu announced it will source tuna only from pole and line and FAD free purse seining operations by the end of 2016, and US/Canadian retail giant Safeway has made the same commitment but to be implemented by the end of this year. Bolton, maker of Rio Mare, publicly committed to changing 45 per cent of its tuna to more sustainable sources but needs an extra push to make it 100 per cent commendable. Greenpeace Canada is gearing up to release its second annual canned tuna ranking, and word in the canned seafood aisle is that customers of some brands might be getting lucky after all.
Unlike finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, change is possible. And more importantly, it’s necessary if we want healthy oceans and coastal livelihoods in the future.
Join Greenpeace this St. Paddy’s day in asking Clover Leaf to green its tuna. You can contact the company toll free at 1 877-893-9880