Pew Report Questions Seafood Eco-Labels
A recent report funded by the Pew Environment Group has suggested
that many seafood products bearing eco-labels are “not much better than
conventional farmed seafood options when it comes to protecting the ocean
environment.” Titled “How Green is Your Eco-label? A Comparison of the
Environmental Benefits of Marine Aquaculture Standards,” the study evidently
relied on the 2010 Global Aquaculture Performance Index “to determine
numerical scores of environmental performance for 20 different eco-labels for
farmed marine finfish, such as salmon, cod, turbot and grouper.” Researchers
then ranked voluntary organic, retailer and industry standards in terms of
both absolute and value-added performance based on 10 environmental
impact measures, including antibiotic and parasiticide use, the ecological
impact of escaped pen fish, and the sustainability of feed fish.
Intended as “a kind of Michelin guide for standards,” the report did not assess
individual farms but instead asked “how poorly a farm could perform and
still meet the written standards relevant to each impact category.” The results
reportedly indicated that while organic standards led all others in both absolute and value-added performance, other kinds of eco-labels often “ignore
major environmental impacts or fail to set measurable limits.” In particular, the
researchers noted that “scale is a big challenge” because eco-labels awarded
to individual farms can overlook “the cumulative environmental effects
of many farms [that] can quickly overwhelm the benefits of reductions in
impacts by a single farm or small group of certified farms.”
“Our research shows that most eco-labels for farmed marine fish offer no
more than a 10 percent improvement over the status quo,” said the report’s
lead author in a December 7, 2011, press release. “With the exception of a few
outstanding examples, one-third of the eco-labels evaluated for these fish
utilize standards at the same level or below what we consider to be conventional
or average practice in the industry.”
