Seafood marketer Deutsche See GmbH, of Bremerhaven, Germany, on Thursday announced it will sell Lake Victoria perch with the Naturland Wildfish label in the near future.
The Lake Victoria perch fishery in Bukoba, Tanzania, is the first to earn the Naturland eco-label.
Deutsche See, Naturland and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) launched the pilot project in 2006 to get the first fishery from a developing country certified. Naturland decided on its first standards for a sustainable wild fishery in July 2007.
Naturland, a German cooperative of organic farmers, first announced Lake Victoria perch from the Tanzania fishery was certified sustainable in April at the European Seafood Exposition in Brussels, Belgium. The certification covers about eight landing sites in the western region of Lake Victoria and involves approximately 1,000 fishermen. The next goal is to certify more of the 70,000-square-kilometer Lake Victoria-based fisheries.
Naturland’s sustainability guidelines focus on environmentally friendly use of fish stocks and the entire ecosystem, avoidance of critical and environmentally harmful fishing methods, ecologically sound processing without artificial additives or genetic engineering and a publicly open, transparent approval process for all parts of the value chain.
