• Supply chain
• Sustainable seafood

  • Sustainable seafood policy
  • Our sustainable seafood policy in action: Wild B.C. salmon video series
  • Inspired magazine article from spring 2011: A tide change
• Sustainable and ethical sourcing
• Private label packaging
• Glossary

Sustainable seafood

Over the past several years, Sobeys' extensive stakeholder engagement process has been instrumental in helping to shape our national sustainable seafood policy. We have had, and continue to have dialogue with fishermen and aquaculture producers, processors, distributors, brandowners, governments, certification bodies, environmental groups, academics and consumers. The insights gleaned have helped us to navigate these complex waters to derive a policy which we feel will create the most positive impact in the nearest term.

Consumers

Our consumer engagement included a national research study of over 1,000 Canadian seafood consumers. It is clear that consumers feel very strongly that seafood species should be protected for future generations to enjoy, are vaguely aware of the specifics of the challenges and feel very strongly that they are an important ingredient in the change that needs to happen. However, they need it to be made much easier for them to make informed purchasing decisions. Sobeys looks forward to simplifying the issues and actions for our customers, fulfilling the commitment to do so that we outlined in our policy.

We are also committed to helping our customers and other stakeholders better understand the complex and challenging issues and solutions related to seafood sustainability. To help educate our customers, we created a video series about wild B.C. salmon with insight from industry, government and NGO thought leaders engaged in the fisheries. We also published a feature story on seafood sustainability in the spring 2011 issue of our Inspired magazine.

Why Go Beyond Eco-labels?

Certification and eco-labels such as Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for wild seafood and Best Aquacultural Practices (BAP) for farmed seafood are important elements in achieving more sustainable seafood industries and consumption. Their work on stakeholder engagement to define criteria that should be evaluated is critical. This criteria serves as the template for helping all fisheries and farms to improve, regardless of whether they are approaching certification or far away from it struggling with key issues.

To date, only a small fraction, in the single digit percentages, of seafood globally has been certified. The seafood sources that have been certified typically have been those that are in the best shape to begin with, hence their ability to achieve certification. Sobeys supports certification programs, and has 50 private label eco-labeled products in store and in progress. However, we are greatly concerned about dealing as a near-term priority with the seafood sources that have the most significant challenges, those that are left out of the certification/eco-labeling process. This is why our efforts go beyond eco-labels, to seek improvements that deal with the most critical issues in the most challenged seafood sources. Meanwhile, there are many seafood sources that have been evaluated by multiple third parties as being in decent shape but are not yet certified. We are concerned about the economics and certification system capacity constraints of forcing such sources to become certified. As such, and given that our focus is on "fixing the worst first" we will not require such seafood sources to become certified in the near term.

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership

Seafood sustainability has ushered in a new era for seafood purchasers. No longer can buyers focus solely on cost of goods, quality and food safety. Many of the insights, tools, and resources we need to pursue improved seafood sustainability are not core competencies of seafood buyers. As such, many companies are seeking partners to help this process of working with their supply chains. Sobeys has engaged Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), a sustainable seafood focused non-governmental organization with global reach, to provide expertise to our company and our suppliers. We chose SFP specifically because they share our philosophical orientation – that eco-labels are important but not sufficient, and because they have demonstrated expertise in working "on-the-water" in improvement plans to address critical issues. We have benefited from their web-based fisheries metrics system, in which seafood suppliers are now inputting monthly data about our seafood sources, bringing us unprecedented visibility into the status of our sources.

Toward Greater Supply Chain Transparency

To adjust to the new reality demanded by improving seafood sustainability, buyers need to evolve their business practices as fishermen and producers evolve theirs. The information we now need about our seafood sources goes well beyond cost, quality and food safety. To start the process, Sobeys gathered sustainability-related data on 12 months of our seafood sources. Now, with our suppliers inputting this data monthly into the web-based tool noted above, we can make better informed sourcing decisions. Our suppliers have committed to continuing to provide the necessary data moving forward which will allow us to monitor and measure our progress.

Improvement Plans

Seafood sources that are facing critical issues often need help in learning to effectively address those issues. This kind of "capacity building" can be driven by a multi-stakeholder process that highlights the issues needing attention and develops appropriate remediation plans. SFP has expertise leading these initiatives, and in deriving positive outcomes. Sobeys will use its influence to support and help initiate improvement plans that are formalized, specific, measurable and time bound via SFP. It is important to note that there is limited capacity for creating improvement plans at any one time. As such, all species that may need improvements cannot be addressed immediately. Improvement plans will be focused on the sources with the most pressing issues, and then as they demonstrate improvement and as more capacity is created, species with less severe issues can be addressed. Sobeys monitors the progress of these initiatives among the sources it procures from. In addition to supporting numerous fishery improvement plans throughout the world, we are also in the process of initiating improvement plans for key species on the West and East coasts of Canada.

Seafood Traceability

As noted above, we now have unprecedented visibility into the sources of our seafood and the sustainability characteristics of those sources. We will continue to build on this "traceability" of our seafood sources to drive toward our 2013 sustainable seafood goal. As part of this process, we have helped usher in a new era of things to come. Through our customer-facing traceability pilot of several wild species of British Columbia caught seafood, customers in Ontario and the Prairies can enter a code found on select seafood products into www.ThisFish.ca to receive information on the fisherman who caught the fish and where, how and when it was caught. Customer reaction to our traceability pilot has been very favourable. Fishermen have had a very positive reaction as well – knowing that "their" customers can now connect with them, they feel customer traceability will inspire them to take even greater steps for the quality and sustainability of the seafood they catch. Our wild B.C. salmon video series provides an in-depth look into what fishermen and industry leaders have to say about seafood sustainability and traceability.

We have also introduced four wild British Columbia seafood frozen products through our Sensations by Compliments private label line that are traceable back to who, how and where the seafood was caught. For an example of the information customers would see when they "trace" their seafood back to its sources, logon to www.ThisFish.ca and input this sample code to trace sockeye salmon: H11137.

Key Actions

Some of our key actions to-date on seafood sustainability includes:

• Gathering 12 months of baseline data about the source and relative sustainability of our seafood, and the ongoing collection of data from our suppliers on a monthly basis
• Implementing a relative sustainability ranking tool for our seafood buyers to use when procuring seafood; this is a new capability, which allows them to consider sustainability issues along with costs and quality
• Supporting the initiation of a B.C. wild salmon fishery improvement plan, and supporting four others, as examples of our seafood sustainability policy in action
• Introducing 50 eco-label (Marine Stewardship Council and Best Aquacultural Practices) sustainable seafood private label products in our Compliments line
• Hosting a National Sustainable Seafood Summit meeting for 150 of our seafood suppliers to help educate them on the issue and explain our activation plan and their role
• De-listing all species of sharks, skates, rays, orange roughy and bluefin tuna
• Piloting www.ThisFish.ca, a customer-facing traceability of several wild species of British Columbia caught seafood through which customers can find out information on the fisherman who caught the fish, where it was caught, how and when
• Creating an online, self-guided course for our employees to learn about seafood sustainability, as well as rolling out a series of in-person training sessions
• Producing a video series about wild British Columbia salmon to educate the public on the types of challenges facing our seafood stocks and the ocean ecosystem

We look forward to providing more information and specific examples here as we continue to implement our policy.

Why De-listing is a Last Resort

Some organizations want us to stop selling all species with major challenges. Sobeys reserves de-listing as an action of last resort as we feel that greater impact can be made by "capacity building" to help develop the insights to fix problems. Otherwise, we are concerned that seafood sources facing critical challenges will simply sell their product to less discriminating markets, rather than addressing the issues if we simply cut them off. In situations where sources are in such dire circumstances that de-listing is the only reasonable action, we will do so. Sobeys has de-listed all species of sharks, skates, rays, orange roughy and bluefin tuna. We aim to improve the situation faced by other species through improvement plans. It is important to note that the fishing and production practices can vary significantly from one fishery area to another and one region/country to another. Very often there are viable sources of challenged species, by seeking areas where the producers are demonstrating exemplary practices. Supporting those producers sends a clear signal about the market-based benefits of improvement.

Toward Greater Supply Chain Transparency

To adjust to the new reality demanded by improving seafood sustainability, buyers need to evolve their business practices. The information we now need about our seafood sources goes well beyond cost, quality and food safety. Earlier this year, Sobeys gathered sustainability related data on the past 12 months of our seafood sources. This took a lot of focused effort from our teams and our suppliers and now that we have assembled this data, we can make better informed sourcing decisions. Our suppliers have committed to continuing to provide the necessary data as a matter of course moving forward which will allow us to monitor and measure our progress.

About Our 2013 Sustainable Seafood Goal

As noted above, Sobeys reserves de-listing for those seafood sources that are in the most dire situations where the only responsible action is doing so. We feel that greater near- term impact can be made by implementing improvement plans among sources that face significant issues. However, if sources are still facing significant issues, after our repeated attempts through SFP to implement improvement plans, at the end of 2013 we will no longer be able to procure from these sources.