Retailers and other buyers that heavily rely on certifications, such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) credential, to support seafood sustainability claims face growing legal, regulatory, and investor risks unless they adopt far broader due diligence systems, according to a new industry report.
Commissioned by marine conservation coalition Make Stewardship Count, the report, titled “Beyond Certification: The shift to corporate due diligence accountability across the seafood supply chain,” argues that the global seafood industry is entering a new era in which certification schemes alone no longer offer sufficient protection against environmental, labor, and greenwashing liabilities.
The report’s author, Living Oceans Campaign Director Kelly Roebuck, said the industry must recognize that certifications can only form part of a wider due diligence framework.
“Over the last decade, we have seen an increasing emphasis on the need for retailers and companies to adopt human rights and environmental due diligence approaches to their sourcing,” she told SeafoodSource. “Certifications are just one source of information that should be triangulated with additional sources to ensure companies fully understand and address any actual and potential adverse impacts within their supply chains.”
The report stops short of declaring certification schemes useless in today’s landscape, but it maintains that the seafood industry is moving toward a “beyond certification” model, under which it becomes one tool among many, rather than the primary basis for sustainability claims.
Roebuck particularly highlighted the retail sector, saying there’s a “pervasive overreliance” on certifications and audits in the space, instead of implementing comprehensive due diligence which suggests an underestimation of potential legal and non-legal risks, which include emerging anti-greenwashing laws, modern slavery legislation, biodiversity disclosure requirements, and broader corporate accountability rules.
“For some, their seafood supply chain due diligence obligations, and reliance on certifications as a substitute, are being challenged in court and through other means,” she said.
Roebuck pointed to a lawsuit against French retailer Carrefour over MSC-labeled tuna products using France’s Corporate Duty of Vigilance Law, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) complaints and shareholder resolutions against Australia’s Woolworths Group that are partly linked to its reliance on certifications to source salmon.
“Multiple class-action lawsuits have also been filed against U.S. retailers and seafood companies over their sustainability claims for MSC-certified products," she said. "There are also recent legal opinions from the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand that suggest company directors have a duty to act with care and diligence regarding nature-related risks or face potential litigation and increased shareholder interventions. Such interventions are already happening.”
The report singles out OECD guidelines as the current global benchmark for responsible seafood sourcing, despite the framework itself not being legally binding yet. However, Roebuck said that governments are increasingly incorporating these principles into binding legislation, meaning seafood businesses should expect legal expectations to tighten further over the coming decade.
She also said there is a misconception that the “onus of responsibility” for whether a product is sustainable or ethical lies with the certification scheme, when in fact, under globally accepted due diligence expectations, it’s the buyer that’s individually responsible for ensuring its products are not associated with adverse impacts.
For seafood retailers directly, Roebuck suggested the most urgent priority moving forward would be to embed risk-based due diligence into procurement systems.
“This means no longer relying solely on certifications for seafood procurement practices,” she said.
Another recommendation from Make Stewardship Count is the development of full-chain digital traceability systems capable of giving retailers far greater visibility into their seafood supply chains.
Acknowledging this would be more difficult for smaller operators, Roebuck proposed the transition could be phased in over time.
“The implementation of full-chain digital traceability is the end goal. Reaching the goal is a stepwise journey that companies of any size can take,” she said. “Utilizing frameworks such as the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, companies can start with a data gap analysis focused on high-risk species, regions, and/or parts of the supply chain. Importantly, companies should develop a time-bound action plan toward the goal of full implementation. Ultimately, you can’t assess or conduct meaningful due diligence if you don’t know what is in your supply chain.”
As for the certification bodies’ responsibility in the current landscape, Make Stewardship Count Steering Committee Member and Independent Advisor Cat Dorey said the MSC has “consistently ignored the mountain of credible criticisms and calls for reform.”
Most recently, and despite “stakeholders’ best efforts,” the revised MSC Fisheries Standard includes loopholes, opt-outs, and weak definitions, she said.
“This means that alongside some truly well-managed and healthy fisheries, the MSC label will continue to be awarded to fisheries that routinely catch protected and endangered animals, damage ecosystems, and target overfished species,” Dorey said. “The label will appear on products associated with human rights abuses on fishing vessels and in supply chains. This will continue to undermine public confidence in eco-labels and those retailers that use them.”
Therefore, Make Stewardship Count is calling for MSC to stop referring to its certification as the “gold standard” in global fisheries management and to remove the term “sustainable” from its label. Additionally, the report emphasized MSC must communicate to all stakeholders and users that the program doesn’t replace comprehensive due diligence frameworks and that its Chain of Custody standard is not equivalent to traceability.
“The fact that the MSC omits human rights and climate-adverse impacts from the MSC Standard or that the MSC Standard arguably allows for some adverse environmental harms to happen in certified fisheries does not absolve the organization of its responsibility to conduct due diligence for any actual or potential human rights and environmental harms associated with its operations, activities, and those for which it has a business relationship,” Roebuck said.
Responding to Make Stewardship Count’s report, the MSC stated that with over one-third of the world's stocks overfished and with widespread concerns about the health of the oceans, recognizing fisheries that operate sustainably and incentivizing improvements “is more important than ever.”
“While we recognize the gravity of the labor challenges within the seafood industry and support global efforts on progress on labor in the sector, our core mission as a not-for-profit, environmental standard-setting organization is to tackle the global challenge of overfishing and associated threats to ocean biodiversity,” the council said. “The MSC does not offer social assurance, and there are no social claims associated with the MSC eco-label.”
