Thank you.
My name is Nadia Bouffard. I am the Director General of Fisheries Renewal at Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Essentially, my role is to oversee the renewal of national fisheries management in Canada to improve the sustainability of the fisheries.
Today I am mainly going to try to provide you with information about new market trends toward demanding proof of the sustainability of seafood, and to describe what the Department is doing to address that new trend. I will then answer your questions in the official language of your choice.
However, I would like to inform the committee that I ordinarily make this presentation with my colleague from the Aquaculture Management Branch, Trevor Swerdfager, who you heard last week, I believe. Unfortunately, neither Mr. Swerdfager nor his colleague could be here today.
If you like, I will cover the question of aquaculture eco-certification in a general way. If you have specific questions, I would like to give those questions to the Department so it can answer you in writing.
I would also like to note that the presentation you have in front of you is very detailed. I prepared it that way intentionally to give you the most possible information. However, I am going to talk about it in very summary fashion to keep more time for the question period.
If you would, go to page two of the presentation.
I essentially will cover a bit of the context, the options for eco-certification that are out there, and talk to you a bit about the Canadian experience. I will skip part 4, but have included it in this presentation to provide the committee with some background on the tracking and tracing of seafood, because it's an issue that is connected to eco-certification. If you have any questions, I'm willing to respond to them.
On the context, the green movement is hitting corporate boardrooms and it is a trend. It's not something that is starting, but has been around for a number of years. Those of you who may have participated in seafood shows, whether in Boston or Brussels, will notice how mainstream this trend is, particularly in the last couple of years. It's mainstream in the seafood sector, but it's also mainstream in the food sector. In fact, we're seeing the large retailers, as well as the food service sector, looking into this more and more. Their expectations are growing and the list of issues they expect information on is also growing. Their focus has been on environmental sustainability, food safety, and social responsibility, but there's also a whole list of other issues, as you can see on slide 5.
I think markets can be positive drivers for change. The ENGO community has actually targeted this. They have moved from engaging with governments to focusing on working with the retail sector and the food service sector, realizing that these sectors make a large part of the decisions on options available to consumers.
Their focus has been shifting to doing all kinds of things, including report cards on retailers. You may have seen these in the last couple of years. Greenpeace has issued report cards on the top ten retailers in Canada and the top ten in the U.S., and they've also done this in Europe. They've also formed close alliances with these businesses to work with them on their purchasing practices and the list of seafood products they purchase, trying to provide them with advice, based on their own standards, as to what these retailers and food service members, such as restaurants and chefs, should or should not purchase.
The movement started in the wild capture fisheries and has become more evolved today. It certainly is very relevant and important in the aquaculture sector and its operations. So what I will cover in terms of the options available is to demonstrate that while the wild capture fishery sector has evolved far more than the aquaculture sector, the aquaculture sector is actually learning from lessons we've learned on the wild capture side, and is moving rapidly.
Slide 8 provides you with a general description of the different options. When we hear about eco-certification we often hear about the Marine Stewardship Council and the like, but there are other options available out there on the markets.
There are different products or different ways of addressing sustainability. One is to have your fishery certified and assessed, which may or may not involve an actual label associated with your product. Other options include consumer guides, mostly developed by ENGO communities, which have also evolved into small, wallet-sized information cards.
Some governments around the world have developed their own sustainability standards and assessment processes. As well, retailers are starting to develop their own programs, working with ENGOs and others, including their own policies. They're actually being a little broader here than focusing on environmental sustainability of seafood alone, but are looking at it as a green movement within their overall purchasing practices and policies.
What's important to note from this proliferation of labels and other options is that there's a lot of information out there. There's some confusion, as different conclusions are being reached by different organizations on the same species, for example. This creates confusion in the minds of buyers and consumers.
There is also inaccurate and misleading information out there. I'll touch upon that as well in the different options that exist.
Slides 9 and 10 give you a bit of an example. I don't propose to go through this in detail, but I wanted to give you an example of a consumer guide developed by SeaChoice, which is an alliance of Canadian ENGOs, actually from both east and west coasts. They have done their own internal assessment. It's not a public assessment, though you can see from their website how they've come to their conclusions. They essentially boil it down, so that it's much easier and attractive to consumers, to a list of green, yellow, and red, depending on their conclusions whether it's a best choice, a choice with some concerns, or to avoid altogether.
Slide 11 shows you some of the eco-labels that are available on markets today. The one on the left corner, Marine Stewardship Council, as you'll see from my presentation, is the one that seems to be the gold standard in wild capture fishery out there, the one that's mostly picked up by large retailers and many of the fish producers around the world.
How has the market responded to this trend?
Demands for proof of sustainability of seafood and its source are increasing, and some of them are actually demanding specific eco-labels. Examples include U.K. buyers such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, and Marks and Spencer. They actually require specifically MSC-labelled products.
In terms of retailers' sustainable seafood policies and decisions, as I mentioned, you may have heard of Loblaws recently coming up with their own policies. They're actually going through their entire purchase list, working together with WWF, to determine what they're going to continue to sell and what they're going to take off from their shelves. Wal-Mart made a similar decision a couple of years back, committing to sell only sustainable seafood at a certain date. They've been moving that date along, working with different aquariums such as Monterey Bay and New England Aquarium.
The food service sector partnerships with ENGO groups are also influencing what you see at restaurants, and the chefs are actually picking up on this wave. They have a lot of influence in terms of what restaurants purchase in terms of seafood, but they also influence consumers and citizens through their cookbooks and through cook shows and the like.
The seafood sector--on slide 13--has responded by making decisions or not to eco-label their products. I stress the point that this is an industry decision. It's really a market-driven decision, in the end.
There are many choices, as I mentioned, that are available. Some involve in-depth assessments, some not. Some are public processes—