Backgrounder : Ranking Canada’s supermarkets on their commitment to sustaining seafood

The reports are key tools in Greenpeace’s campaign to protect our oceans which contain the planet’s most diverse ecosystems. They are home to 90 per cent of the Earth’s living organisms, some essential to human survival. The UN says fish is the main source of protein for close to one billion people.

But oceans are in danger. Destructive fishing methods and overfishing are major threats to the survival of marine ecosystems. The seafood they harvest is sold in Canadian supermarkets.

Out of Stock, Out of Excuses shows that while some retailers have made progress they still are not providing Canadians with seafood that is sustainably caught and farmed. This failure means they are not fulfilling a responsibility help protect the world’s oceans and seafood.

To rank the retailers, Greenpeace visited supermarkets and assessed their performance against seven criteria:

• Sustainable seafood policy: did a policy exist, was it implemented;
• Information on how seafood is harvested: what criteria were used for excluding seafood from unsustainable fisheries or aquaculture operations;
• Sustainability initiatives: efforts made to work wih suppiers to find sustaiable alternatives and to support research;
• Traceability: ensuring that seafood can be traced back to the ship;
• Labelling: providing customers with information on scientific name of species, origin, fishing or farming methods;
• Redlist species sold: number of Redlist species sold by a chain out of 15;
• Promotion and auditing: efforts to raise customer awareness about sustainability, working with stakeholders on fisheries issues and auditing.

Based on these criteria, Greenpeace ranked the major supermarket chains out of 10:

• Loblaw 2.4
• Sobeys 1.1
• Walmart 1.0
• Overwaitea 0.9
• Federated Co-Operatives 0.9
• Costco 0.7
• Safeway 0.3
• Metro 0.1

The Redlist species sold in Canadian supermarkets are the seafood most at risk of commercial extinction.
The species on the list are:

• 1. Arctic surf clams
• 2. Atlantic cod
• 3. Atlantic haddock
• 4. Atlantic halibut
• 5. Atlantic salmon
• 6. Atlantic sea scallops
• 7. Chilean seabass
• 8. Greenland halibut
• 9. New Zealand hoki
• 10. Orange roughy
• 11. Sharks ( many species)
• 12. Skates and rays (many species)
• 13. Swordfish
• 14. Tropical shirmp and prawns
• 15. Tuna (bluefin, yellowfin, bigeye

The criteria Greenpeace used for identifying Redlist species—stock status, species vulnerability, and environmental impact—are discussed in more depth in the first supermarket report, Out of Stock: Supermarkets and the future of seafood, released in June 2008.

This report documents the severe threat to the sustainability of seafood. In the report, Greenpeace urged Canadian supermarkets to live up to their responsibility for the collapse of fish stocks and not sell Redlist species.

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For more information, please contact:
Alex Paterson, Media and Public Relations Officer, (416) 524-8496
Beth Hunter, Oceans Campaign Coordinator, (514) 569-8391