sustainable seafood | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

It was episode 15 of MasterChef SA, flighted on Tuesday last week, that attracted attention to Woolworths’ communication about its commitment to sustainable seafood. The TV commercial matched the reality TV series focus on seafood prepared on the beach at Paternoster, and Chef Pete Goffe-Wood gave a brief introduction to the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI), saying that it educates consumers about buying fish responsibly. Woolworths is one of the major sponsors of MasterChef SA, and joins Robertsons as another MasterChef SA sponsor which is not being honest with consumers.

Chef Pete said that ‘green‘ rated fish is in order to buy, while ‘orange‘ and ‘red’ rated fish denotes fish varieties that are overfished and scarce, and should not be eaten. The Woolworths TV commercial expressed the retailer’s commitment to sustainable seafood.

It was a visit to Woolworths the following day that made me check out the seafood section at the St John’s Piazza store in Sea Point, where I noticed the following:

* the dominant SASSI poster about Woolworths’ ‘sustainable seafood‘ supply, using the SASSI colour rating

* About half the fish sold is kingklip, on the SASSI ‘orange‘ list!

* The ‘Fresh Fish’ department has fish displayed whole, and pre-packed in portions, and has a mix of such packs with and without the sustainability rating on it! This is inconsistent per fish type, i.e. some of the kingklip is SASSI colour rated, and other packs are not.

* The colour blue does not appear on the SASSI list, but the majority of Woolworths’ fish packs have a blue sticker. The Calamari Goujons pack I bought had a blue rating, with the heading ‘Fishing for the future’, which is defined on the pack as follows: ‘Our FISHING FOR THE FUTURE’ initiative is your guarantee that the product is responsibly sourced. Blue indicates farmed or imported‘. It then provides the SASSI cell number for checking on the sustainability status of a fish type, and depicts and defines a green fish (‘Best choice‘), orange fish (‘Concern‘), and a blue fish (‘Farmed or imported‘)!

At the Canal Walk branch of Woolworths a sales poster attracted attention to a frozen hake promotion, and this carried the MSC logo for being ‘Certified Sustainable Seafood‘. Nowhere in its outlets does it explain what MSC stands for, and how it differs from the SASSI rating, leading to consumer confusion.

We Tweeted about the visible predominance of the ‘orange‘ rated kingklip in the St John’s Piazza store in Sea Point last week, and received the following reply by e-mail from Alana Jattiem of Woolworths (she did not supply her designation): “Thank you for getting in touch with us on our Twitter page. With regards to your concerns, SASSI has requested all retailers to remove labelling off packs, hence the phasing out of on pack labelling by Woolworths. Customers are welcome to check this with SASSI. Regarding your query on Kingklip, Kingklip is orange on the SASSI list not because of the stock status, but rather because of the impact of the fishery on by-catch such as sea birds. Our kingklip is sourced from MSC trawled hake suppliers who make use of highly effective by-catch mitigation devices such as “Torry lines” to scare off birds and thus, to a large extent, preventing them from getting caught. It should be noted that there are fishery improvement projects underway to make the kingklip fisheries more sustainable and from a retailer side we are asking our suppliers to get MSC certification on kingklip which would be a guarantee of its sustainability. We hope this answers your concerns & questions. Thank you for your support”.

On pressing Alana for further information and clarification of where Woolworths is moving in its sustainable seafood programme, we received the following disappointing reply: ‘Given the changes required around SASSI labelling on product, we are in the process of revising and rebranding our fishing for the future initiative, which will cover certified products from the MSC, ASC, Sassi green label, and registered fisheries improvement programmes and new commitments through to 2015 . Please expect a full press release and awareness campaign in the next 4-5 months’. A third e-mail to Alana to request further clarification more urgently resulted in a non-response.

Given these disappointing replies, not understanding Alana’s cryptic and acronymic replies, and feeling fobbed off by her e-mails, I checked the Woolworths’ Pantry page on their website, which links blogposts to the theme of MasterChef SA week by week. There is no mention of sustainable seafood for week 15, which focused on seafood, and Woolworths’ commitment to it, as communicated in MasterChef SA’s episode 15.

I then checked the corporate Woolworths website, and under the heading ‘Good Business Journey’ found a lengthy statement about the retailer’s plan ‘to make a difference in our communities, our country and our world’, and its commitment to sustainability across a number of different fields (e.g. fibres, business, ecosystem). The company says it has a comprehensive plan to make a difference in respect of ‘transformation, social development, the environment and climate change‘. On the company’s internal sustainability rating it scored 84% in 2010, it writes proudly. It then goes on to list all its awards relating to the environment, sustainability and responsibility. There is no mention of its new ‘Fishing for the Future‘ initiative in this section at all, and information appears dated, with awards mentioned up to 2010 only!

At the St John’s Piazza branch of Woolworths the following fish types are sold:

* Hake – ‘green’ rated

* Norwegian salmon – some of the packs have no sustainability rating, others are rated ‘blue’ (with the same definition as the calamari above)

* Kingklip – ‘orange’ rated on some packs, other packs not rated

* East Coast sole – ‘orange‘ rated

* Angelfish – ‘green‘ rated

* Dorado – ‘green‘ rated

* Yellowtail – ‘green‘ rated

* Salmon fishcakes – no rating, and type of salmon unspecified in one pack type, and ‘blue’ rated in another pack type!

* Norwegian salmon slices – ‘green‘ rated (one wonders why it is ‘green’ when its fresh Norwegian salmon is ‘blue‘ rated?

* Smoked snoek – no rating

* Mackerel – no rating

* Snoek and haddock fishcakes – ‘blue‘ rated

* Pickled fish – ‘blue‘ rated, even though its hake content is ‘green’ rated!

* Haddock fishcakes – ‘green‘ rated

* Smoked kippers – ‘blue‘ rated

* Smoked trout – some packs ‘blue’ rated, others not at all!

* Frozen lobster tails, half shell scallops, black tiger prawns, and ‘prawn meat‘ packs are all not rated!

* Lightly smoked mackerel – ‘blue‘ rated, plus has a confusing green logo to show it is high in Omega 3, and a blue MSC certification logo

* Lightly smoked hake fillets – ‘green‘ rated, and blue MSC logo.

On the SASSI list snoek, West Coast lobster, as well as Alaskan salmon are green rated. Deep-water and shallow-water hake, kingklip, king mackerel (line fished), prawns, East Coast rock lobster (hand collected), Atlantic salmon, sole, and yellowtail farmed in sea cages are all orange rated. Norwegian salmon, of which Woolworths sells a large quantity, does not appear on the SASSI list.

MSC stands for Marine Stewardship Council, an international organisation that conducts audits of sustainable seafood from catch, to supermarket sales, to restaurant presentation. Nowhere in the Woolworths stores is any information provided about MSC, or is the abbreviation defined, other than two fish types having the MSC eco-label. At St John’s Piazza branch I noticed a second poster, with the three colours Woolworths is using, adding blue to denote ‘farmed or imported, not listed by SASSI‘, being downright dishonest and confusing to consumers in making it appear that ‘blue’ may be a SASSI rating, in that it contains SASSI’s name, cell number, and website address, but makes no mention of MSC! The poster concludes that Woolworths’ ‘fish and seafood is responsibly sourced, legally caught, has full traceability’. This poster is smaller than the one at the top of our blogpost, and is not visible to shoppers buying the pre-packaged fish on the opposite shelf, as they would have their back to both posters! The staff member at the fresh fish department could not answer any questions, and said she only started working at this Woolworths branch yesterday!

It appears that Woolworths is at early steps of becoming sustainable as far as its seafood supply goes, and has jumped the gun in creating a TV commercial in this regard, in not being able to practice what it preaches in the ad! It needs to be consistent in labelling all its fish products in store. Fish stock sustainability is not only a South African issue, but also an international one, and therefore creating a ‘blue‘ rating is irresponsible (because it does not exist on the SASSI rating system), and labelling all imported products into this rating is too, as imported fish varieties need to be responsibly eaten too! It is deceiving consumers to use the ‘blue’ rating, to make them think that it is in order to buy these fish products. While I personally love kingklip, Woolworths should discontinue its supply of this endangered fish variety, as well as all its other ‘orange‘ fish types, in order to remain true to its ‘sustainable seafood’ commitment! Currently it is a fishy and confusing consumer con!

POSTSCRIPT 3/7: Impressed that Woolworths has called (what a bubbly and friendly media person Babongile is!), and has invited me to a meeting to discuss the blogpost with them next week.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage

A documentary about overfishing will be screened at Nu Metro cinemas from 22 October onwards, and is an ‘inconvenient truth’ about the future of the global fishing industry. “The End of the Line” is a film based on a book with the same name, written by British environmental reporter Charles Clover, reports the Cape Times. It raises important issues about which fish consumers should eat, and which fish types restaurants should include on their menus.

Clover says that if fishing continues unabated, fish stocks around the world will be depleted by 2048. He views fish not only as a food type, but also as a type of wildlife which needs to be protected. The protection of whales by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is well-known, and is the only sea mammal receiving any direct protection from a private organisation, to prevent whaling by the Japanese in the main, but also by fisherman in Norway and Iceland.

Despite good research provided to politicians about responsible quotas that should be set, to allow for the recovery of depleted stock, they tend to set higher than desired quotas, with disastrous results for the future of the fishing industry. The European Union ministers, for example, have allowed 61 000 tons of bluefish tuna, whereas the quota should be 30 000 tons. Consumers can make a difference, by refusing to order, buy and eat fish species that are on the endangered list.

Clover wants his film to encourage consumers to buy ‘sustainable seafood’, to support responsible fishing, and to support the creation of marine reserves. The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (Sassi) has worked on an educational program since 2005, to make consumers aware of endangered seafood types. It has updated its 2005 list, and has moved Prawns, Sole and Kingklip from its “Green – Best choice” list to the Orange – Think Twice” list, making almost every local restaurant guilty of moving away from sustainable and responsible seafood usage.

The Sassi list encourages one to eat fish on its Green list, which includes Alaskan salmon, Anchovy, Angelfish, Calamari, Canned tuna, Dorado, Hake, Herring, Maasbanker, Kob (land-based), Mussels, Oysters, Sardines, Snoek, Crayfish, Yellowtail and Yellowfin Tuna. The Orange list includes farmed Abalone, Atlantic Yellowfin Tuna, farmed Atlantic/Norwegian Salmon, Cape Dory, line-caught Geelbek/Cape Salmon, Hake, King Mackerel, Kingklip, Kob, Monk, Prawns, Red Roman, Sole (East coast), Swordfish, White Stumpnose and locally-farmed Yellowtail. Encouraging news is that projects to improve the stocks of Kingklip, Monk and East Coast Sole are underway. Fish types on the Red list, to absolutely avoid, are Black Musselcracker, Bluefin Tuna, Kob (caught by trawlers), Red Steenbras, Red Stumpnose, Cape Stumpnose, Galjoen, West Coast Steenbras , White Musselcracker and White Steenbras.

What makes it difficult to apply ‘sustainable seafood’ ordering is the lack of knowledge of restaurants about the source of the fish, and the fishing style. A handy service allows one to text cell 079 499 8795 with the name of the fish, and one will receive a reply as to the degree of endangeredness of the seafood. The only restaurant that I have seen carry the Sassi logo, demonstrating its support for sustainable seafood usage, is Pete Goffe-Wood’s Wild Woods in Hout Bay.

I checked out the fish species on the current Eat Out Top 10 restaurant list menus. Roots and Terroir do not have a menu on their websites. Rust en Vrede, Grand Provence and The Tasting Room do not use any seafood which is not on the Green list. La Colombe, Overture, and Mosaic serve Prawns and/or Kingklip, which are on the Orange list. The Roundhouse serves Tuna, Kob and Scallops – as the type of Tuna, and fishing style of the Kob is not specified, one cannot judge its responsibility in including these seafood types on its menu. Ninth Avenue Bistro serves Tuna, but does not specify which type. Overture serves ‘Silverfish’, but it does not appear on the Sassi list at all.

For more information about the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative see www.wwf.org/za.sassi.

POSTSCRIPT 23/9: In the Cape Times of 22/9, it is reported that the prediction of fish becoming extinct by 2048 has been slammed by South African scientists. However, Charles Clover, author of the book, says that this is mentioned in the film.

POSTSCRIPT 16/10: The Weekend Argus of today reports that Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli has pledged about R 38 million to ‘fund the policing of the UK’s Marine Protected Area around the Chagos Island in the Indian Ocean”, in response to seeing “End of the Line”. The documentary has had an impact on celebrities too – Jamie Oliver has taken bluefin tuna off his menu; and Charlize Theron, Sienna Miller, Sting, Stephen Fry, Woody Harrelson and Prince Charles are all supporting the Blue Marine Foundation, which was set up as a result of the documentary by using private sector support to improve fish stock and sustainability.

POSTSCRIPT 16/10: Blowfish Restaurant in Blouberg is the most SASSI-aware restaurant in South Africa, as far as we aware. A page of their menu is dedicated to their “Green Values”, and each of their green fishes are marked on the menu. They do however also stock orange fish on the SASSI list. A SASSI poster has been put up near the fish counter in the restaurant, to educate restaurant patrons.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com