Suppliers boost restaurants’ eco-accountability

A quirk of the European seafood market is most new product innovation, particularly for convenience items, is inspired by restaurant chefs, whereas sustainability has to date been almost solely driven by retailers.

In the wake of several, very public NGO attacks on stores for selling overexploited species, it’s now the norm for all European supermarket chains to operate rigorous sourcing checks, whereby if a seafood item isn’t green their buyers aren’t interested in it.

By comparison, there have been one or two high profile outings of restaurants as a result of the ongoing debate over the trading of bluefin tuna and last year’s release of the “End of the Line” documentary film. But on the whole, and tuna aside, restaurateurs and caterers have been cut considerable slack in terms of the scrutiny of their buying policies.

It’s widely agreed they are pretty much left to their own devices in terms of regulations and monitoring.

For example, in the 16 years that she has been running the U.K.-based Moshi Moshi Japanese-style restaurant chain, Caroline Bennett has had just one visit from the government-charged Food Standards Agency.

“Restaurants can get away with murder,” she told delegates at the recent Seafood Summit in Paris. Fortunately for her patrons, Bennett is an advocate of responsible sourcing — she removed bluefin tuna from her menu in 1999 and this maverick decision was met with considerable scorn. Such a move today would be almost universally lauded.

But in the grand scheme of things such luminaries are few in number, and there are many busy European restaurateurs and chefs still wandering aimlessly in the sustainability minefield.

According to Adam Swan, commercial director of seafood for the Brakes Group, a leading foodservice supplier to the United Kingdom, Ireland and France, many customers over the last 12 to 18 months have been preoccupied by survival rather than the sustainable nature of their business. “That won’t go away,” he said.

But as it transpires the industry is in a state of flux. And perhaps all chefs’ blushes will be spared by the considerably increased pro-activity of their suppliers. Many of these suppliers are either implementing new sourcing policies or revising the ones they have in place to ensure all their products could soon be confirmed as coming from responsibly managed stocks.

Swan pointed out that chefs are reliant on foodservice suppliers to provide them with the correct sustainability messages. It’s their role, he said, and it seems such endeavors are really starting to bear fruit.

One of the biggest catering and hospitality providers of them all, Sodexo, the leading supplier in many of the 80 markets it operates in, recently announced it will only source sustainable seafood in all its markets by 2015 as part of its business-wide “Better Tomorrow Plan.”

Steve Jobson, buying director for Sodexo UK and ROI (Republic of Ireland), said the global rollout for sustainable seafood sourcing is now underway.

The plan, which in the United Kingdom and Ireland is being assisted by Brakes’ subsidiary M&J Seafood, will include creating and abiding by a list of species identified as being at risk. Sodexo has also promised to introduce a workshop on sustainability and yield management of fish for its senior chefs.

Sodexo UK and ROI currently has 42 lines using Marine Stewardship Council-certified fish, and 14 percent of its fish by volume, or 91.5 metric tons per year, is MSC-certified, which highlights the sheer size of the task at hand.

Jobson is under no allusion that this would prove an easy policy to introduce but said the company was determined to see it through.

“We are on a journey here,” said Jobson. “We are trying to bring as many MSC-certified products on to our menu as possible.

“Our buying team is working with our chefs to ensure there is no conflict of price. We are being mindful of when we have to pay a premium and whether our client will accept that premium. This is key, and we’re working with experts in the field to give us that knowledge,” he said.

A future hurdle will be ensuring sources of sustainable farmed seafood, and Jobson and Swan confided that they’re currently not sure where the solution lies.

But the general feeling among both foodservice and retail buyers is the WWF-directed Aquaculture Stewardship Council will have a large role to play when it is up and running.

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