The FAIRR Initiative, a global investor network with a membership representing USD 95 trillion (EUR 81.6 trillion) in assets under management, recently launched a new global Seafood Index to assess risks and opportunities impacting the long-term sustainability of the global seafood industry.
“Often considered a lower‑impact alternative to other animal proteins, the seafood sector may have enjoyed overly positive perceptions due to the lack of an industry-specific benchmark – until now,” FAIRR said of the index’s launch.
Among several criteria, the new index covers modern slavery and child labor in supply chains, animal welfare, ecosystem impacts, traceability, and food safety.
Through the index, 20 of the world’s largest listed seafood suppliers receive a score out of 100 that aims to showcase the maturity of their strategies to address such risks and/or take advantage of potential opportunities.
More specifically, it reflects not only the risks a company is exposed to and how prepared it is to financially manage those risks but also the potential upside it could benefit from adopting leading practices and positioning itself as an innovator.
Bergen, Norway-headquartered salmon-farming firm Mowi scored the highest overall at 57 out of 100, scoring particularly high (69 out of 100) in its approach to social risks, which includes modern slavery and child labor, worker representation, and workforce well-being.
The firm scored 14 points higher than the second-place firms in the index: Bakkafrost and Salmones Camanchaca. Lerøy Seafood Group, SalMar, Grieg Seafood, Multi X, Thai Union Group, Charoen Pokphand Foods, and the Mitsubishi Corporation rounded out the top 10 in that order.
On the other hand, in order, Premium Brand Holdings Corporation, Sysco, and Kyokuyo comprised the bottom three.
Sysco ranked the lowest across nature and climate topics, scoring just six out of 100. The company had low rankings on pollution; unfed aquaculture; water scarcity; ecosystem impacts, on which it scored zero out of 100; and deforestation and conversion.
“Sysco is committed to sustainable practices and responsible stewardship of natural resources,” a Sysco spokesperson told SeafoodSource in an email. “We will continue to prioritize these goals and others where we have found the greatest benefits to the environment as we collaborate further with stakeholders and partners to work collectively toward these achievements.”
Across the board, most companies scored particularly low on pollution, which includes effluent discharge from salmon farms, marine litter from pens, and fishing gear chemical contamination.
While the scores for food safety are among the highest of the index’s categories, averaging 43 out of 100, antibiotic stewardship (27 out of 100) and animal welfare (26 out of 100) scores are lower, significantly undermining food quality and increasing risks to consumer health, according to FAIRR.
On average, companies scored 11 out of 100 for their approach to delivering more sustainable products. This includes protein diversification, including the expansion of portfolios into plant-based and alternative proteins, and unfed aquaculture, referring to the farming of species such as mussels and macroalgae that require no external feed input and are among the most ecologically efficient forms of seafood production.
The index also found that traceability remains problematic across both wild-caught and farmed fish production.
The 20 companies scored 27 out of 100 on average on this topic, “leaving consumers globally exposed to mislabeling provenance and even potentially illegally caught seafood,” FAIRR said.
When assessed on the execution of environmental and social strategies and progress on key performance indicators in those areas, companies scored 25 out of 100 and 23 out of 100, respectively.
“This underlines the urgent need for companies to go further than paper commitments and demonstrate transparently and concretely how they are monitoring and progressing on outcomes,” FAIRR said.
Besides corporations improving their own operations, FAIRR also emphasized that the goal of the index was to grant investors and other stakeholders the ability to better understand the exposure seafood companies have to risks and support improved food system resilience.
“Capital has the power to accelerate the shift toward more sustainable practices if investors have the tools to understand the true impact of harmful practices and their financial materiality,” DNB Asset Management Director of Governances and Biodiversity Karl Høgtun said. “The Seafood Index is a leap toward the more sophisticated identification of the sector’s social and environmental risks and opportunities with a forward-looking view on whether companies are really taking action. It seeks to drive urgent change to improve the long-term viability of fishing and aquaculture while minimizing harm to nature and communities.”
