Undercurrent news 27 April 2022
The MSC hosted a sponsored event at the Seafood Expo Global, ‘Seafood Futures Forum’ where their presentation showed the scale of North Atlantic pelagic species’ certification loss. The loss of North Atlantic mackerel and Atlanto-Scndian herring certifications drove global volume sales down by 2% with even higher losses in other regions. According to the MSC, many brands are now looking to use Chilean jack mackerel in place of mackerel. Several photos from the presentation are included in this blog post, and show these figures in further detail.
Our thoughts: While we appreciate that the MSC certifications of these fisheries were suspended, in many cases the issues that caused these losses were already present at the time of the initial assessment and certification. Rather than having the fisheries “fix” the issue prior to certification, the CABs opted to give a high enough score for the fisheries to enter certification with conditions in hopes that the problem would be solved before re-assessment. However, these conditions have not solved the ongoing challenge of relevant coastal states developing a scientifically-based shared quota, and fishing above scientific advice still continues. There is an ongoing need for coastal states to set quotas and management measures in line with scientific advice, and for the MSC CABs to suspend fisheries that fail to meet these criteria.
