Asks all retail partners to complete a public disclosure by end of 2019

The Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP) is expanding its format to include seafood ratings from a variety of nongovernmental and governmental sources. From January 2019 onwards, the ODP will incorporate seafood sustainability ratings for wild fisheries from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, Ocean Wise, the Marine Conservation Society Good Fish Guide, and the NOAA Fish Stock Sustainability Index (FSSI), as well as data based on Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s FishSource scores that were used in past disclosures.

The ODP is also launching a new logo that participants can use to demonstrate their commitment to transparency in seafood sourcing. The logo can be used on corporate materials, in retail displays, and on packaging, but it is only available to companies that provide a disclosure profile via the ODP web platform.

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership is asking all retail partners to complete a public disclosure of seafood sourcing by the end of 2019. The disclosure does not have to be via the ODP web platform, but it must reveal the species and origin of all wild-caught seafood sold by the business.

Commenting on the recent developments, Blake Lee-Harwood, Strategy Director with Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, said:

“Companies that are committed to sustainable seafood should be prepared to publicly disclose the origins of the seafood they sell, and the Ocean Disclosure Project provides a free platform for publishing this information. The original ODP profiles already contained data on certification, but the new format includes NGO and NOAA rating systems, so it is possible to see how seafood sourcing shapes up to third-party sustainability assessments.”

Lee-Harwood continued:

“Sustainable Fisheries Partnership is asking all of its retail partners to make a public disclosure of seafood sourcing by the end of 2019, but not necessarily via the ODP. We hope that other NGOs with retail partners will follow this lead and indeed would like to see all retailers fully disclosing their seafood sourcing as quickly as possible. Full transparency in the seafood industry will be an incredible boost to efforts to make seafood more sustainable.”

Some of SFP’s retail partners, including UK retailers Asda, Co-op, and Morrisons, and North American retailers Giant Eagle, Meijer, Publix, and Walmart US, already demonstrate transparency in seafood sourcing by participating in the ODP. Throughout 2019, SFP will be engaging with its other retail partners to encourage them to disclose.

Established in 2015 by Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, the Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP) is a global platform for voluntary disclosure of seafood sourcing. The ODP is dedicated to increasing transparency in seafood supply chains by encouraging seafood-buying companies to publicly report on the seafood they source. The ODP provides a common template through which companies can report the fisheries they source from, alongside information on the provenance, stock status and management, and environmental impact (including impacts on protected, endangered, and threatened species, bycatch, and benthic impacts) of these fisheries. This information is used to create annual profiles reflecting the company’s sourcing from the previous year, which are then published on the ODP website. The site can be viewed at www.oceandisclosureproject.org.

In September 2017, the ODP launched as a new website, with nine leading companies demonstrating transparency around sustainable seafood sourcing. Since then, a further seven companies from the UK and North America have disclosed their seafood sourcing, including major retailers Walmart US, Giant Eagle, Lidl UK, and Meijer, and seafood suppliers North Atlantic Inc., Albion Farms & Fisheries, and Tradex.