TAKEACTION
Call Galen Weston 1-888-495-5111
Pick up the
phone and leave a message for Galen Weston. Tell him you want
Loblaw to stop selling Redlist fish and develop a sustainable
seafood policy.
QUIZYOUR GROCER
During your
next visit to your local supermarket, choose a couple of species of
seafood that you are concerned about and ask the person at the
seafood counter where the seafood is coming from and how it was
caught or farmed.
- Is this salmon wild or farmed?
- What species of tuna is this, and can I be sure it wasn't
fished illegally?
- I'm trying to avoid tropical shrimp because of the impact of
aquaculture on coastal communities, do you have any
alternatives?
- I don't want to buy bottom-trawled fish, can you tell me how
this was fished?
Write back to us at seafood@greenpeace.ca to let us know
which supermarket you visited and in what city, which seafood you
asked about and what the employee responded to your questions.
Greenpeace is urging Loblaw to shoulder its share of the
responsibility for the decline of fish stocks by ceasing to sell
the most threatened species. Loblaw accounts for nearly a third of
the grocery market share in Canada and operates under banners
including Atlantic Superstore, Maxi, Provigo and Zehrs.
Why Loblaws and what if you don't shop there?
Loblaw presents itself as a 'green' grocer, but Greenpeace
surveys indicate that the company is selling 14 of the 15 Redlist
species that are most destructively fished or farmed. In its
Out of Stock report released last June, Greenpeace
identified a "Redlist" of seafood which should be taken off the
shelves until stocks recover or fishing and fish farming practices
improve.
Redlist species at risk of commercial extinction include
Atlantic bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, sharks, skates and orange
roughy. Tropical shrimp is the most consumed species on the list,
but harvesting and farming the species is wreaking havoc on
ecosystems and threatening coastal communities. Bottom trawling and
other destructive fishing methods are raking the ocean floor and
fishing at an entirely unsustainable rate.
Our oceans are in peril: global fishing operations take 2.5
times more fish and seafood than is sustainable. Currently,
three-quarters of the world's fisheries are fully exploited or
overexploited, and 90 per cent of large, predatory fish such as
tuna and cod are gone. Greenpeace is advocating for a global
network of marine reserves covering 40 per cent of the oceans.
As the link between the consumer and the producer, supermarkets
have a unique role to play in ensuring fish for the future.
Greenpeace is asking Loblaw and other retailers to take the
pressure off threatened fisheries now by purchasing their seafood
only from sustainably managed fisheries. If they don't, there soon
won't be any fish left to sell.