The Soil Association, Organic Food Federation and Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue are among the marine finfish aquaculture standards that scored highly in a new report published by the University of Victoria and backed by the Pew Environment Group.
Titled “How Green is Your Eco-label? A Comparison of the Environmental
Benefits of Marine Aquaculture Standards” and released on Wednesday, the report scored and ranked the environmental performance of 20 marine finfish aquaculture standards and their corresponding eco-labels, based on a “well-established” quantitative methodology derived from the 2010 Global Aquaculture Performance Index.
The report, which bills itself as “a kind of Michelin guide for standards,” is designed to help seafood buyers sort through competing environmental claims.
Scoring the highest overall are the U.S. National Organic Standards with a mark of 81, followed by the Soil Association (79), Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue (77), Organic Food Federation (76) and BioGro (75); four of the top five are organic standards. Scoring the lowest overall are the Global Aquaculture Alliance, BioSuisse, Australia Certified Organic, Marks & Spencer and AquaGAP. Among the 20 standards, 10 are managed by industry/third-party groups, eight by organic groups and two by retailers.
Beyond the ranking itself, the report found that the majority of eco-labels for farmed marine finfish offer “no more than a 10 percent improvement over the status quo,” said John Volpe, Ph.D., a marine ecologist at the University of Victoria and the report’s lead author. “With the exception of a few outstanding examples, one-third of the eco-labels evaluated for these fish utilize standards at the same level or below what we consider to be conventional or average practice in the industry,” he said.
The report evaluated 11 marine finfish species: Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, barramundi chinook salmon, coho salmon, cobia, European sea bass, gilthead sea bream, grouper, milkfish and turbot. It did not look at freshwater finfish species such as tilapia or catfish.
The report also evaluated 10 environmental factors to assess the eco-labels, including antibiotic use, parasiticide use, the sustainability of the fish used in the feed and the industrial energy needed in aquaculture production.
“Eco-labels can help fish farmers produce and consumers select environmentally preferable seafood, but only if the labels are based on meaningful standards that are enforced,” said Chris Mann, director of Pew’s Aquaculture Standards Project. “Seafood buyers at the retail or wholesale level should demand that evidence of sustainability be demonstrated, not merely asserted.”
