Activists canvassed the area outside the store with a large banner reading “Don’t Buy, Don’t Sell Redlist Fish” and handed out information leaflets to customers. Another banner targeted the store directly, reading “Metro: Selling Fish to Death.”

“Greenpeace is at Metro today to let consumers know that Canada’s supermarkets are major accomplices in ocean destruction,” said Kevin Hill, a Greenpeace oceans activist. “We are asking their customers to help us convince Metro to stop the sale of Redlist fish and begin selling sustainable seafood.”

The Guelph action follows the release of a new Greenpeace report entitled Out of Stock, Out of Excuses: Ranking retailers on seafood sustainability. The report ranks Canada’s major grocery chains on their sustainability efforts under seven criteria, including the quality of their seafood policies and the number of Redlist species sold.

The Metro chain received the lowest ranking, in part because it has no plan to develop a sustainable seafood policy. Greenpeace delivered a copy of the ranking report to the store’s manager.

“Metro is last in the Greenpeace ranking because it refuses to take action to protect our fish stocks from commercial extinction,” said Hill. “We want their customers to know that Metro is helping to fish our oceans to death.”

Today, day seven of the Greenpeace confrontation campaign against major supermarket chains, also included an activity in Quebec. During the campaign, activists will challenge store management at grocery outlets in 19 cities in five provinces. So far, nine Greenpeace activists have been arrested. Successful activities have also been conducted in Victoria, Kelowna, Nelson South Surrey, and Coquitlam, B.C.; North Bay, Peterborough, Kingston, Hamilton, and London, Ont.; and Trois-Rivières, Victoriaville, Rimouski, Chicoutimi, and Quebec City, PQ.

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Editor’s Note:

A backgrounder and the full Out of Stock, Out of Excuses report are available at the end of the news release on the Greenpeace press centre: www.greenpeace.ca/press

The 15 Redlist species are: Arctic surf clams, Atlantic cod, Atlantic haddock, Atlantic halibut, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sea scallops, Chilean seabass, Greenland halibut, New Zealand hoki, orange roughy, sharks, skates and rays, swordfish, tropical shrimp and prawns, and tuna. More information on the Redlist species is in the report.

For more information, please contact:
Kevin Hill, Oceans Activist, (647) 502-4889 (on location in Guelph)