Fri, February 15, 2019 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM AQUATIC ECOSYSTEMS RESEARCH LABORATORY (AERL). Speaker: Sarah Foster / Liane Veitch
SeaChoice
Location: AERL Theatre (Rm. 120)
Since SeaChoice's founding in 2006 until 2017, our focus was to increase consumer awareness and develop materials on seafood sustainability in Canada. Our primary goal was shifting seafood procurement by Canadian suppliers and retailers away from unsustainable sources to more sustainable options. We created easy-to-use tools, based on scientific assessments, to help Canadians make the best seafood choices.
Over the first decade, our retailer partnerships successfully shifted seafood procurement away from unsustainable sources, and developed consumer awareness of sustainable seafood options in Canada. With the success of our retailer commitments, we reached a limit in our ability to help retailers influence change on the water, as the majority of “red-ranked” seafood products were replaced with more sustainable alternatives.
To ensure sustainable seafood supply and demand continues to increase in Canada, we recognized the need to expand our focus throughout the seafood supply chain, and to aggregate our market focus nationwide. So in 2016 we embarked in a new direction: To reform unsustainable seafood production and become Canada’s leading sustainable seafood watchdog.
Ensuring accountability in the seafood supply chain is a critical aspect of SeaChoice’s new direction. Among our many efforts toward this goal are:
* Providing retailers with tools and incentives to improve their sustainable seafood commitments and create in-house policies.
* Using market leverage to improve some of the least sustainable fisheries and aquaculture production.
* Ensuring that seafood certification and ranking systems are as robust as possible.
* Improving transparency and traceability in the seafood supply chain by reforming seafood labelling legislation in Canada, verifying seafood labelling through DNA testing in Canadian markets, and working on technical solutions for traceability.
Come and learn how SeaChoice is leading the sea change for seafood sustainability in Canada