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<DIV class=article-heading><FONT size=4>Seafood labelling under
fire</FONT></DIV></HGROUP>
<DIV>Study finds that some stocks certified as 'sustainable' are
overfished.</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=vcard><A class=fn
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seafood-labelling-under-fire-1.10626?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120515#auth-1">Daniel
Cressey</A></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections><TIME datetime="2012-05-11" pubdate>11 May
2012</DIV>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seafood-labelling-under-fire-1.10626?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120515">http://www.nature.com/news/seafood-labelling-under-fire-1.10626?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120515</A></TIME></DIV></HEADER><SECTION>
<DIV class=section>
<DIV class="content no-heading cleared main_content"> </DIV>
<DIV class="content no-heading cleared main_content"> </DIV>
<DIV class="content no-heading cleared main_content">About one-quarter of
seafood sold as ‘sustainable’ is not meeting that goal, according to an analysis
taking aim at the two leading bodies that grant this valuable label to
fisheries.</DIV>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">In an online paper in
<I>Marine Policy</I><SUP><A id=ref-link-1 class=ref-link
title="Froese, R. & Proelss, A. Mar. Policy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2012.03.017 (2012)."
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seafood-labelling-under-fire-1.10626?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120515#b1">1</A></SUP>
and at a conference this week in Edinburgh, UK, fisheries biologist Rainer
Froese of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, launched a
stinging attack on the schemes by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the
marine-conservation organization Friend of the Sea (FOS) to certify fisheries as
sustainable. Such schemes aim to help consumers and retailers to support
fisheries that are sustainable and not exploited by overfishing.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Both organizations approve
certain stocks of fish and seafood to carry their logo, designating these
species as environmentally friendly, and both say that their certification
processes are scientifically credible. The presence of the logos can result in
higher prices and increased consumer demand for food products that carry
them.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">To assess whether products
certified by the two bodies came from sustainable stocks, Froese and his
co-author Alexander Proelss of the University of Trier in Germany compared
information from each organization with a variety of independent assessments by
fisheries scientists and national and international fisheries management bodies.
The authors examined 71 MSC-certified stocks and 76 FOS-certified stocks,
including species of mackerel, swordfish and tuna, and concluded that 31% of the
stocks labelled as sustainable by the MSC and 19% of FOS-certified stocks do not
deserve the label.</P>
<H2 class="content no-heading cleared main_content"><FONT size=2>Pressure
points</FONT></H2>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Froese says that he was an
early supporter of MSC certification in Germany, but that as the number of
stocks given the sustainable label increased, “more and more I said, not this
one”.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Speaking to <I>Nature
</I>from the World Fisheries Congress in Edinburgh, Froese says that pressure is
mounting on certification bodies to clean up their acts, with increasing numbers
of scientists and non-governmental organizations raising objections to the
schemes. “We’re putting them under a lot of pressure and we hope that will work.
I want to improve them, not to kill them,” he says.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">His criticisms chime with
previous concerns about certification for particular species. In 2010, a
critique of the MSC by conservation scientist Jennifer Jacquet, marine biologist
Daniel Pauly and others in <I>Nature</I><SUP><A id=ref-link-2 class=ref-link
title="Jacquet, J. et al. Nature 467, 28–29 (2010)."
href="http://www.nature.com/news/seafood-labelling-under-fire-1.10626?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120515#b2">2</A></SUP><I>
</I>triggered a series of responses from scientists both for and against the
group.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Jacquet, who works on the Sea
Around Us fisheries and ecosystems research project at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, says that the paper by Froese and Proelss
“represents not only growing concern among scientists about the effectiveness of
seafood eco-labelling in general and the MSC label specifically, but an
increasing willingness for scientists to take on rigorous research in response
to that scepticism — research that the MSC should probably be doing itself”.</P>
<DIV class="related-stories-box box">She adds, “The results were pretty
depressing, even for someone who was already dubious of the MSC.”</DIV>
<DIV class="related-stories-box box"> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV class="content no-heading cleared main_content"><STRONG>Sustainable
stocks</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV class=section>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Paolo Bray, director of
Friend of the Sea in Milan, Italy, says that he considers the study “the best
assessment that was ever done of its kind”. After Froese and Proelss completed
their study, but before the paper was published, FOS de-certified three stocks,
while the MSC has suspended certification for a similar number. Bray notes that
once the three de-certified stocks are factored in to the assessment, 88% of
fisheries certified by his group are neither overexploited nor overfished.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">“This is for FOS a very good
result and confirmation of the selectivity of our assessment,” he says, adding
that the remaining 12% is down to factors such as FOS accepting data up to five
years old, whereas the study by Froese and Proelss considered only two-year-old
data.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">But the MSC forcefully
disagrees with Froese and Proelss’ conclusions. David Agnew, director of
standards at the London-based organization, says that the work attempts to
redefine the term ‘overfished’.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Froese and Proelss looked at
two different measures — how many fish there were and how many were being
captured. To calculate what they defined as 'overfishing', they looked at
fisheries in which fish captures exceeded the level that would allow a species
to stabilize at a population level capable of producing the 'maximum sustainable
yield' for humanity. To calculate their definition of 'overfished', they looked
at the total biomass of a stock, and looked for fisheries in which it was less
than the biomass that would represent the maximum sustainable yield.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Froese says the first of
these measures is “globally accepted”. For the second, he says: “What would you
call that if not overfished?”</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Agnew says that the accepted
international standard for 'overfished' involves more complicated and variable
"limit reference points", below which not enough new fish are being born and the
fishery is at risk of collapse. This is often set at half of the biomass that
would represent the maximum sustainable yield, a limit used by bodies such as
the Food and Agriculture Organization.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Agnew, who was also at the
Edinburgh congress, says that the MSC has done its own research on 44 fisheries
using current data, which backed up its belief that these stocks are
sustainable.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">“There are no overfished
stocks carrying the MSC logo. They are all fished sustainably,” says Agnew.</P>
<P class="content no-heading cleared main_content">Both sides do agree on one
thing — that buying certified seafood is still the best option. The situation
for sustainably certified fish might be unsatisfactory to some, but things are
even worse for non-certified species.</P></DIV></FONT><BR>
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