November has been a month of milestones for the Marine Stewardship Council. One week ago, the London-based NGO announced that peeled, frozen shrimp sold by UK retailer J. Sainsbury had become the 7,000th product to bear its eco-label; this was then followed a few days later with the certification of the 100th fishery (Ocean Trawler Barents Sea cod and haddock).
Certainly, over the 10 years that MSC has been in operation it’s made an important contribution to the seafood industry, yet in recent weeks I’ve heard consumers are allegedly not engaging with it, not least from Which? — Europe’s largest consumer-rights organization, with more than 700,000 members.
Speaking at the Fishing & Marine Environment conference in London, Mette Kahlin, advocacy advisor for Which?, said only 15 percent of its members surveyed in April recognized the MSC logo, and a survey of the general public two months later showed just 6 percent of the general public recognized it.
In fact, Which? found all labeling schemes are “generally poorly understood and fail to help consumers understand how different aspects of sustainability have been addressed.” Kahlin said consumers who want to use sustainable labeling struggle to do so. Its April survey also discovered that seven out of 10 of its members always or sometimes tried to buy sustainable fish.
“The will is there, they just can’t really do it,” she said. “This is also in line with further research we did on sustainable labels in general, not just fish, that showed three out of four [people] think protecting the environment is important when choosing food.”
For its survey, Which? showed its members six different labels: one-third of those surveyed didn’t recognize any of these; 44 percent recognized dolphin-friendly labels; 40 percent didn’t think enough information is given to help them make a sustainable choice; 52 percent think it’s difficult to understand and to buy sustainably sourced fish; and 28 percent think labels currently give consumers all the information needed to make informed choices.
“We had a look at what people think is important when they buy food. Taste and quality came out first, buying safe food was the second concern, price third, healthy eating fourth, and then protecting the environment and more sustainable labeling concerns came in,” said Kahlin.
It seems what Kahlin and Which? have failed to grasp — besides that in busy, contemporary society 15 percent or even 6 percent awareness of anything should be considered respectable penetration — is the strong trust consumers have in their retailers to source sustainably and ethically. They expect their store to make the right choices for them.
I’m led to believe the same trust and expectation prevails in the restaurant industry, which is just as well as it’s considerably harder for operators in this sector to inform end-consumers of the sustainability policies that are in place. This is because most sourcing messages are lost in complex supply chains, confirmed Adam Swan, commercial director of seafood for European foodservice supplier Brake Group, who spoke at the same conference as Kahlin.
“What the end-consumer sees is anything but a packaged item, as it’s generally served on a plate or in a fish-and-chip shop wrapper, or sandwiches that you take away to your desk at work. There’s no information that consumers actually see at the point of consumption,” said Swan.
“The reality of it is we try to get end-users and our independent restaurants on to MSC products because that’s what people seem to recognize out in the marketplace,” he explained. “All we can do is offer, as an industry, the right alternatives for them to make the choice.”
Swan also made the important point that when people go out to eat in a restaurant, they tend to use the occasion as an opportunity to let their hair down rather than worry about messages. “So we can give directional information to our customers. Whether they pass it on and indeed whether consumers are interested is, I think, a different matter,” he said.
So while there will no doubt continue to be more debate about eco-labels, and the proliferation of them, which may or may not add to consumer confusion, there’s undeniable momentum for putting eco-labeled seafood products on shelves and restaurant plates. We should also remember that sustainability and eco-labels are works in progress. What we have now is not what we are likely to have in another five or 10 years.
