The Overwaitea Food Group (OFG), which operates 117 stores across 80 communities in Western Canada, said it will no longer sell yellowfin tuna, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy and other non-sustainable seafood.
The retail grocer is one of North America’s first grocery retailers to commit to a sustainable seafood policy.
SeaChoice (www.seachoice.org), Canada’s national seafood program, provides science-based sustainability assessments of seafood and helps Canadian businesses and consumers make sustainable seafood choices. The program is backed by the David Suzuki Foundation, Sierra Club BC, and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
“The future health of our oceans depends on our ability to protect wild fish stocks and the marine environments they live in,” David Suzuki said at the announcement. “To help achieve this, we need retailers to provide customers with sustainable seafood and stop selling unsustainable products.”
As part of that policy, OFG is working with SeaChoice to develop and implement a sixpoint sustainability plan for the procurement and sale of seafood in its stores:
- offering customers sustainable seafood options and reducing procurement of unsustainable seafood
- providing transparency and traceability information on seafood products they sell
- openly collecting and sharing information regarding OFG’s sustainability practices
- educating its team members, suppliers and customers on sustainable seafood
- encouraging policymakers to improve and develop laws and regulations that support sustainability
- ensuring a sustainable future for seafood stocks
“It’s very complicated and things keep changing,” said Steve van der Leest, president of Overwaitea Food Group. “That’s why we ended up looking for experts in the field and ended up with the David Suzuki Foundation, because they have the best science we could find.
“Some of these lines we’re about to discontinue are inexpensive and very popular,” van der Leest said. “Sustainable replacements [like sablefish] will be twice the cost and we expect our sales will be down, but we think it’s a good investment. Doing the right thing always pays off.”
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Read the Reuters report at the link below.
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