Anyone living along the West Coast of Canada knows that eating sustainable and local food is a way of life. It is no surprise, then, that the 26-store Thrifty Foods chain, a division of 1,300-store chain Sobeys, has been selling sustainable seafood for several years.
“We had a sustainable program long before the big players in the industry. Officially, we have been running a sustainable seafood program since 2006,” says Dave Sherwood, seafood category manager for the chain that is based in Saanichton, British Columbia.
The retailer’s latest sustainability effort goes beyond sustainable seafood purchasing. The Thisfish program, provided through Ecotrust Canada, allows Thrifty shoppers to trace their fish back to the ship that caught it, the method by which it was caught, and the waters in which it was harvested.
Thisfish works like a bar code or tagging system, with a unique numerical code assigned to each catch. Customers can input the tag — a sticker on the paper wrapping of fresh fish — into the “trace your fish” field on the Thisfish website and learn their fish’s story. “You can even access photos of the boat and crew, along with details from the captain’s logbook and a map showing where the catch took place,” says Tasha Sutcliffe, fisheries program director, Ecotrust Canada.
Click here to read the rest of the feature on Thrifty Foods, which appeared in the October issue of SeaFood Business magazine.
