The WWW-SASSI Retailer/Supplier Participation Scheme Report 2017 was released into the public domain at the annual Sustainable Seafood Symposium hosted by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and WWF-SA’s Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI) held in Cape Town recently. It confirms that there has been some growth in the global sustainable seafood movement. Furthermore for the first time there has been committed effort by some of the companies participating in the scheme to ensure a reduction in the use of single-use plastics such as straws.
The WWF-SASSI Retailer/ Supplier Participation Scheme Report 2017 showcases progress made over the last year by nine South African seafood vendors who have committed to sourcing sustainable seafood.
Transparency and traceability have emerged as key supply chain issues, especially when it comes to combatting the growing threat of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.
Chris Kastern, WWF-SA’s Seafood Market Transformation Manager, comments: “In the absence of adequate traceability and supply chain transparency, markets cannot recognise responsible fishers, consumers cannot make informed seafood choices, and governments cannot successfully combat trade in illegal seafood products.”
Increasing awareness and a growing sense of responsibility in the seafood industry has led to a number of global initiatives to help address these challenges, including the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability.
This dialogue is an international, business-to-business platform that seeks to establish seafood traceability practices (https://traceability-dialogue.org/).
South Africa’s seafood products
South Africa’s seafood products are valued on the international market whilst others play a key role in domestic food security.
The 2017 WWF-SASSI survey showed that the most commonly consumed seafood products include hake, calamari, prawns, canned tuna, fresh tuna, mussels, farmed and wild-caught salmon. These are all products where participants have been focusing their effort in terms of sustainable procurement.
The report points out though that some product categories are made up of different species, harvested using different methods and come from different parts of the world, so “while many of the species that make up the different product categories come from sustainable sources, some do not.
Incentivise transformation of fisheries
Therefore, participants have needed to find ways to incentivise transformation of the fisheries and farms where the unsustainable species are coming from, as these are key species to their businesses in terms of volume sold,” the report says.
While there is some success in implementing consistent procurement strategies for some products such as canned tuna, prawns and salmon (wild caught and farmed), one challenge remains squid which is the second most consumed seafood in South Africa, according to the survey.
“While many of the squid species harvested and the fishing methods used to target squid are considered sustainable, there are some that are key to many participants that are on the WWF-SASSI Orange-list due to uncertainties regarding the extent of fishing pressure on the stocks from illegal, unregulated, unreported (IUU) vessels, the report says.
“One of the ways to change this is to put pressure on suppliers and importers to drive supply chain transparency and to incentivise source fisheries to report catches and provide the level of information required to effectively manage squid stocks.
Collaboration
“Challenges such as these may seem insurmountable at an individual company level. However, through effective collaboration participants can collectively drive the necessary positive change in fishing sectors that provide the seafood that consumers demand.”
The first South African retailer made public commitments to sustainable seafood in 2011. Since then it has been joined by the other eight vendors.
They have given themselves until 2020 to meet their own targets for embedding systems to support the ongoing sustainability of their operations in an effort to achieve a shared vision of a sustainable seafood industry.
