The Marine Stewardship Council on Friday said it has not been able to pursue its investigation into allegations of supply chain breaches for certified South Georgia toothfish products.
In late August, a study published in the journal Current Biology showed that some Patagonian toothfish bearing the MSC eco-label does not originate from the certified fishery, while some fish isn’t toothfish at all.
The MSC has asked Peter Marko of Clemson University, the study’s lead author, and his research team four times for the sampling information necessary to establish whether or not the products tested in their investigation were, in fact, mislabeled.
To date, none of the data, including place of sampling, date and time of sampling, MSC chain-of-custody certificate number and product form has been supplied, according to the MSC. The MSC has been told, however, that some of the data required will be available in the future.
“We take supply chain integrity extremely seriously and we’re very disappointed that, over a month after we undertook to investigate these mislabeling claims, we have been unable to progress our investigation due to lack of sampling data from this study,” said David Agnew, MSC standards director. “Without such data, we are unable to make a judgment about whether product substitution has taken place at some point, leading to mislabeling. Once we have these data, we will conduct a full review and present the outcome.”
However, the MSC took this opportunity to publish its 2009 study on the verification of toothfish supply chain integrity, which found no evidence for mislabeling. In addition, the MSC said it will undertake the investigation should relevant and comprehensive data be supplied by the research team.
