Australia’s orange roughy fishery is set to be certified to the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) Fisheries Standard following several failed attempts from the nation’s fishing industry to get it certified.
The certification, which will be valid for five years, has faced significant pushback from environmental NGOs on the basis that orange roughy is a listed threatened, endangered, or protected (TEP) species.
“No species on a recognized TEP list should be certified as one of the most sustainable seafood options a consumer can choose,” said Adrian Meder, the sustainable seafood program manager at Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), a South Brisbane, Australia-based environmental nonprofit.
The opposition from AMCS and other groups was successful for many years, drawing the ire of fisheries representatives such as Simon Boag, a fisheries advisor at Australia-based Atlantis Fisheries Consulting Group, which Boag said has been engaged by a number of orange roughy quota owners to seek MSC accreditation.
“Environmental NGOs will complain and make up lies because they are becoming irrelevant,” he said.
Boag told SeafoodSource that AMCS erroneously classifies orange roughy as endangered in Australia but he said the fish is actually “classed as ‘conservation-dependent’ by the Australian government.”
“This is the ranking of least concern,” he said. “We must not forget that the World Wildlife Fund started MSC with the aim that if fisheries achieved its certification, global fishing would be more sustainable. Now that fisheries are achieving MSC Version 3.0, [NGOs] complain. The rebuilding of orange roughy is an amazing achievement that the Australian community should be proud of.”
Fisheries stakeholders like Boag and groups including AMCS have opposing views of the MSC’s Version 3.0 standard, originally issued in 2023 but amended in 2024.
Boag said MSC’s standard is based on the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization guidelines and environmental NGOs, governments, buyers, and fisheries were involved in drafting Version 3.0, which he described as “the toughest version [to meet] yet.”
Meder, on the other hand, told SeafoodSource …
