Sustainable Seafood: It's the Future

You may have the heard the phrase "sustainable seafood" on more people's lips lately. Just this March, for example, the retail behemoth Wal–Mart surprised the seafood industry when it said that within three to five years it was committed to buy its wild seafood only from fisheries that have been certified as sustainable.

So exactly what is sustainable seafood and who decides if a fishery is sustainable? So far the London–based Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is the only organization set up to certify a fishery as sustainable. Patterned after the Forest Stewardship Council, which has had considerable success convincing large home products stores to sell only wood from forests that are harvested on a sustainable basis, the MSC has been in business for almost 10 years.

Over its tenure, the MSC has come under considerable criticism from both the seafood industry and environmental groups. The seafood industry has been carping that MSC's certification procedure is glacially slow and expensive. Environmental groups, on the other hand, are split over whether MSC panders too much to the seafood industry. Greenpeace, for example, accused MSC of "green–washing," when it certified the pollock fishery off Alaska, the largest single-species food fishery in the world. Other environmental groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund, actively support MSC's efforts.

At Simply Seafood, we are committed to sourcing our seafood from fisheries and fish farms that are managed on a sustainable basis. Our Pacific Keta salmon, for example, come from Japan's well–managed hatchery programs that release billions of young salmon into the North Pacific Ocean each year.

Selling sustainable seafood is good for business and it's good for the environment. We're glad that it's finally catching on.

All the best!

Look for Simply Seafood® Products at the following fine stores:

Albertson's
FoodMaxx
Giant Foods
Karns
Save-a-Lot
Schnuck's
Smith's Food and Drug
Stop & Shop
Target Superstores
Weis Markets
Winco Foods
99 Cents Only Stores
Bilo Foods
Quality Markets
Riverside Markets
P & C Foods
Grocery Outlet