Editor’s note: The following is a letter to the editor from John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director in response to the story, “NFI warns retailers of Greenpeace ‘hypocrisy’.”
Supermarkets Continue to Make Progress on Sustainable Seafood (no thanks to NFI)
Coincidentally or not, the second entry that shows up if you google NFI is a link to an Urban Dictionary definition. If you’re not familiar with the term, I won’t spoil the fun, but the shoe seems to fit.
As reported in the seafood trade press, the National Fisheries Institute is beginning its annual “nothing to see here!” drive to convince people not to pay attention to Greenpeace’ upcoming report assessing major supermarket chains in terms of the sustainability of their seafood. This is of moderate interest to us, if only because NFI’s attacks help draw attention to our report.
Meanwhile, interest from supermarkets and their seafood-buying customers continues to grow. When we release the seventh edition of the Carting Away the Oceans report in May, it will be with the cooperation of eighteen of the twenty retailers we survey. Not everyone likes the report, but pretty much everyone aside from NFI acknowledges that it has helped track — and, more importantly, catalyze — progress in the retail sector. Even some of NFI's own members are poised to receive positive press from this year's survey. As one senior seafood retail executive told us last year, “that ranking you guys do, I hate it…But I have to tell you, it’s working. And I want you to promise me that no matter what I say or what anyone else says, you’re not gonna stop doing it.”
It has been exciting to be able to share so many good news stories about sustainable seafood, through stories in outlets like the Washington Post and USA Today, presentations at meetings like the Blue Vision Summit and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and through the reports themselves. When we issued our first report, in 2008, all twenty retailers got failing marks. Many supermarkets were in the midst of sustainability efforts focused on reducing waste, increasing recycled content, improving efficiency, and reducing carbon footprints, but seafood was not yet on many retailers’ radars. By the time we released our sixth report last year, sixteen of twenty had achieved passing scores and two — Safeway and Whole Foods — had made it all the way into the green category.
This dramatic improvement across much of the retail sector involved a lot of work from a lot of NGOs, consumers, and seafood businesses. Greenpeace is proud to have played a part in this transformation. Of course, while most retailers are working hard to ensure their seafood is sustainable, our oceans are still in pretty rough shape. (Did you know marine fish biomass has dropped 80 percent over the last century?) In response to NFI’s attack on us last year, I suggested that they were letting their members down by failing to provide any leadership on these important issues. Several industry reps privately agreed with me, and one said he was working on getting NFI to change their approach.
Unfortunately, it seems like NFI’s new leadership hasn’t brought any new thinking. I wonder how much longer their members will wait?
