The Marine Stewardship Council is making a concentrated push to certify Chinese retailers’ private-label offerings.
MSC has partnered with retailers Hema and Aeon for the launch of new lines of private-brand products, according to Gao Rui, a spokesperson for MSC China.
“Private-brand seafood products carrying [the] MSC eco-label become a trend for retailers to match increasing demands of sustainable seafood from their consumers,” Gao told SeafoodSource.
Eight MSC-certified Hema private-label brand seafood products, including cold-water shrimp, cod, and toothfish, are among Hema’s new offerings, and will be touted via a joint “Blue Food Festival” national promotion in July.
“Based on experience of previous years, we deeply engaged [key opinion leaders] to communicate with their followers on MSC products and sustainable seafood concepts by short video and image-text posts on mainstream social media channels, such as Douguo, XiaChuFang, and Weibo.com,” Gao said.
Chinese consumers are becoming more aware of the value of sustainable seafood shopping choices towards protecting marine life, according to a new MSC survey, conducted in conjunction with MSC’s annual Sustainable Seafood Week in July.
According to a survey conducted for MSC by research agency GlobeScan in 28 countries earlier in 2022, China is the most-optimistic nation about the possibility of saving the ocean from irreparable damage in 20 years, with 75 percent of Chinese consumers surveyed expressing positivity – far higher than the global average of 48 percent.
Seventy percent of the Chinese consumers surveyed believe their choices can make a difference to the state of the oceans, while 74 percent believe people should eat seafood from sustainable sources. Twenty-eight percent of the Chinese consumers surveyed said they had bought sustainable seafood to protect the oceans, and 33 percent of those surveyed in China declared themselves willing to buy sustainable seafood in their daily life.
Eighty-nine percent of respondents from China declared themselves worried about the state of the oceans, with their top concerns listed as pollution (43 percent), overfishing (38 percent), and climate change (33 percent).
State-controlled Chinese media has not dwelt on the impact on the oceans of overfishing and illegal fishing by China’s distant water fishing fleet, which has been promoted in national media outlets as a valuable growth industry.
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