Since publishing its Sustainable and Responsible Seafood Buying Policy in April 2011, El Corte Inglés — Spain’s largest retail group and owner of Hipercor hypermarkets and Supercor and OpenCor supermarkets — has reached a key milestone as the country’s first retailer to offer canned and frozen seafood bearing the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) eco-label. The first products bearing the MSC eco-label are Campos brand albacore tuna, both canned and frozen, and Officer brand herring in tomato sauce.
SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Chris Dove recently caught up with El Corte Inglés to talk about the MSC program and the retailer’s commitment to sustainable seafood.
Dove: How are your customers adapting to your sustainable seafood message?
El Corte Inglés: As a retailer of quality products, El Corte Inglés see that for the Spanish customer quality is increasingly related on a daily basis with sustainability and environmental care. For this reason, and within the framework of our purchasing policy regarding sustainable and responsible seafood, we are keen to offer our customers quality products that guarantee the sustainability of our resources over the short, medium and long term.
Which sustainable seafood products will you source beyond MSC-certified tuna and herring?
We decided to collaborate with MSC in certificating sustainable wild fish products because it is a well-known international organization, and its principles in certifying products and companies are unbiased, objective and based on scientific criteria. We already have several certified products in our stores both in Spain (tuna and herring) and Portugal (sardines), and we’ve also begun working with GlobalGAP to offer certified aquaculture products.
Tell us more about your seafood buying policy.
Working closely with our suppliers, we reach a mutual compromise on the quality, security and safety of the seas and its species. With this ambitious project, which involves various stages of implementation and evaluation, we aim to contribute to the survival of marine species while ensuring we meet future consumer demand and support the continuity of all fishing-related industries.
El Corte Inglés stores removed more than 1 metric ton of mislabeled hake following last year’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ findings. How big of a challenge is preventing mislabeling?
El Corte Inglés is a responsible, alert company which acts with immediate response. As soon as we found out there was a mistake on the original labeling which identified one hake species as another, we decided to remove the product from our stores, although it was in perfect condition. This measure follows our constant improvement policy and our project to offer our customers every available piece of information, allowing us to move forward to better product traceability.
