“It’s a marketing ploy.”
That was the damning assessment of Gerhard Passrugger, executive chef at the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong, regarding the move by a rival Hong Kong-based hotel chain to pursue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) chain of custody certification. The hotel chain – which Passrugger declined to name – can now use the MSC label on its menus for related MSC-certified seafood.
“I know their chefs very well and I know they don’t care a damn about sustainability, but this is good marketing for the hotel,” Passrugger said.
Speaking on an industry panel at the 2018 Seafood Expo Asia event in early September in Hong Kong, Passrugger said he wants a more rigorous means of examining a hotel’s real commitment to sustainability, including sourcing practices and staff training on sustainability.
Two Shangri La hotels officially became the first hotels in Hong Kong to achieve MSC and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) Chain of Custody certifications in 2016. The certifications entitle the hotels' restaurant menus to include the MSC label to denote fish that comes from a certified sustainable source, and the ASC label to indicate sustainably-farmed seafood.
Shangri La properties in mainland China have for several years been hosting an annual “seafood sustainability week,” organized in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund and the China Chain Store Franchise Association (CCFA) and China Sustainable Retail Roundtable (CSRR). The Hong Kong-based group operates five different hotel brands, including Shangri La, Kerry, and Traders.
Passrugger himself buys from smaller producers who are not able to afford MSC certification, but use the WWF’s color scheme, which grades seafood from red to green.
“Staff at WWF’s office in Hong Kong scrutinize and recommend green-listed suppliers to us,” Passrugger said.
Passrugger offered a scathing critique of the fee charged by MSC for each dish served bearing its MSC check-mark.
“You have to pay the whole process of registration and then you have to pay this significant revenue, which seems to be about maximizing revenue for MSC and which is an administrative burden for the certified party,” he said.
Passrugger thinks MSC can afford to lower its prices for producers.
“The volumes they are certifying should mean they [MSC] can now lower the prices of certification,” he said.
Government inaction and retailer complacency also came in for some criticism from Passrugger’s fellow panelists. Sustainability is hampered in Hong Kong by a lack of pressure on retail and distributors, according to Nelson Tse, the assistant general manager at Dah Chong Hong, a major sourcing and retailing firm in the city.
Retailers in Hong Kong are not demanding proof of the sustainability of the seafood products they buy, so there’s no pressure on distributors to supply that information, Tse said.
Bertha Lo Hofford, communications manager at ADM Capital Foundation, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit that seeks to focus cash and expertise from the finance community for conservation efforts, agreed the government of Hong Kong could do much more to encourage business to adapt a labeling policy.
“The industry needs a definition of what sustainability is and also a code of conduct that all actors on the distribution side can refer to,” Lo Hofford said.
Asked by SeafoodSource why authorities don’t do more to tighten the influx of tropical fish such as endangered wrasse and grouper, Tse had a simple answer.
“GDP,” he said, referring to Hong Kong government’s reluctance to do anything that might harm its consumer economy.
Photo courtesy of D’Evenitif Co.
