News
Greenpeace removes threatened seafood products from the shelves in Sweden
12 March 2008
Sweden— Greenpeace has released a guide that ranks the Swedish food store groups on their policies regarding the selling of endangered fish or fish caught with destructive methods. It reveals that all groups are far from having policies that can be approved as sustainable. Now Greenpeace takes it a step further and is removing all endangered fish from the shelves in a few handpicked stores all over the country.
None of Sweden’s food store groups get good grades in Greenpeace’s new guide ‘All good from the sea?’ that was released last week. Greenpeace sent an inquiry to all major concerns to find out more about their purchasing policies concerning fish and shellfish. Though some of the well-established stores responded positively, none had a sustainable fish policy.
Greenpeace is now touring the country and systematically ridding the store shelves of the problematic fish species. After a successful start in Hemköp, Åhléns in Stockholm and other stores in Gävle, Göteborg, Kalmar, Malmö and Sundsvall will be visited.
"By taking this action we want to show that as long as these species are threatened they shouldn’t be for sale," says Staffan Danielsson of Greenpeace. “The merchants are not taking their responsibility seriously as long as they have endangered fish in their stores.”
The best grades go to Ica, with Lidl close behind. Yet they have only achieved about half of the maximum possible score. Netto, largely based in southern and western Sweden, is at the bottom of the list with just a few points. “This is not good enough,” says Staffan Danielsson. “We expect better from Swedish food store groups, since discussions about the fishery crisis and endangered fish species have been going on for quite some time in Sweden. We wouldn’t sell or buy meat from tigers, but it seems OK to sell and buy the last fish. Why don’t they consider the consumers of tomorrow? Don’t they have the right to eat fish too?”
In the Greenpeace guide is a ‘red list’ of fish species to be avoided. Recently there has been a heated debate about cod, but there are a number of other species threatened by extinction, or are caught with methods that totally destroy the sea floor, or are fished in areas where large quantities of by-catch of other endangered species occur.
The tiny eels that migrate up the rivers of Sweden to grow have decreased by 99% in 30 years. Plaice and other flatfish are caught with bottom trawling that devastates the sea floor. Tuna and swordfish are problematic too; besides the fact that many of their populations are threatened, the fishing leads to by-catch of other endangered species such as sea turtles and other marine mammals, and water birds.
"We want the food store groups to take their part of the responsibility and stop selling fish species that are red listed in our guide", says Staffan Danielsson. “Many consumers, more restaurants and municipalities have already decided not to buy endangered fish. Now it is the turn of the grocery stores. We will update our ranking list continuously so that if the groups shape up they have the opportunity to see an improvement to their results.”
This Monday there was a meeting of the Swedish and Danish Fisheries Ministers, but they did not agree on any specific actions to be taken. Greenpeace welcomes such strong cooperation, but more concrete measures must be taken in order for it to become meaningful.
