That same map shows just two U.S. fisheries actively committed to certification: the Atlantic deep red sea crab and Maine lobster fisheries.
MSC has been on the lips of many in Maine’s fisheries and environmental communities. MSC certification of Maine lobster still is a contentious issue, but there’s concern among some U.S. fishery stakeholders that fisheries without certification will be locked out of important markets here and abroad in the near future. Meanwhile, some Canadian and U.S. scientists and environmental organizations publically have accused MSC of betraying its sustainability mission. So while MSC certification is growing more and more necessary to compete, there are a few seeds of doubt whether it will continue to be a label green consumers can trust.
The haddock certification was initiated by the Groundfish Enterprise Enterprise Allocation Council, a Canadian groundfish trade organization. Bruce Chapman, the organization’s executive director, says many groundfishermen believed MSC certification was the only way to ensure access to good-paying markets in Canada and Europe.
“More and more of the marketplace is going this way,” said Chapman, who added that every fishery needs to consider some kind of certification. “If they want to sell to many Canadian retailers and they’re not certified, they’re going to lose market opportunity.”
Some U.S. retailers are pledging to sell only MSC-certified wild-caught salmon, while many British and German markets are closed to uncertified seafood. Wal-Mart has pledged to buy only MSC-certified or equivalently-certified seafood by the end of 2011. Currently, the super-retail chain buys 55 percent certified wild-caught seafood, said a Wal-Mart spokesperson.
Many fisheries are pursuing MSC certification, said Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada. “Whether they like it or not, whether we feel like it’s sustainable or not, this is what the customers want.”
Irvine is urging his organization’s members to pursue certification.
But he believes MSC certification might be easier for Canadian fisheries than for U.S. fisheries because the Canadian government regulates that country’s fisheries more tightly, he said. For example, northeast Atlantic Canadian lobstermen have a mandated lobster season and a lower trap limit than their American counterparts.
And then there’s the matter of organization, said Jen Levin, Sustainable Seafood program manager with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
“Part of the problem down here is that fishermen are not organized very well, and part of the criteria of MSC certification is to be organized,” Levin said.
When a Canadian fishery is certified by MSC, Maine boats that fish in the same waters that lack certification look worse in the marketplace, say fishery stakeholders. It can create an imbalance in market perception among green consumers.
At a 2009 public meeting between Canadian and Maine lobster harvesters and sellers, many worried that the market imbalance might make an “Us-versus-Them” mentality in the marketplace.
“This MSC certification…quite frankly scares the living hell out of me,” said Birch Harbor lobster dealer Dana Rice at the meeting, according to transcripts. “I see Maine…and the Maritimes getting pitted against each other.”
With Canadian fisheries taking the lead in certification, there’s concern that some individual Maine fishing companies will pursue MSC certification independently, leaving other fisheries with less cash available for certification further isolated in the marketplace, said Levin.
“It would be a shame here if just a few [groundfish] harvesters get certified without including the fisheries as a whole,” said Levin.
And in the U.S., unlike Canada, there isn’t much precedent for state governments to work directly as clients of MSC to certify fisheries. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has been the only U.S. state client of MSC, and the process has not been a smooth one.
Alaska was in a perfect position for certification, with a thriving salmon stock and sustainability requirements written into the constitution, said Ray Riutta, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
Certification “was a slam-dunk the first time through,” said Riutta.
But there were problems with recertification five years later, he said. The certifier hired by MSC wanted to reorganize Alaska fisheries and evaluate them separately. The process frustrated the department, which elected to get out of the certification process. Alaska fisheries are now going through a certification process with a different organization, but without the state playing a direct role.
MSC has certified about seven percent of global fisheries; twice that many fisheries are publically committed to the certification process. MSC is considered the most respected third-party certifier for wild-caught seafood and it oversees some 50 percent of all certified fisheries worldwide. That worries some like Riutta.
“We don’t want one player to have the keys to the marketplace,” he said.
Meanwhile, some are beginning to wonder if the MSC label has lost some of its blue-green sheen. Some scientists and environmentalists are beginning publically to question whether MSC is watering down its sustainability credentials with certification of questionable fisheries. The criticism even has been levied by some chapters of the World Wildlife Fund, the environmental organization which helped begin MSC.
In the September issue of Nature, a group of researchers singled out several questionable certification decisions in an op-ed piece. For example, MSC certified the U.S. trawl fishery for pollock in the Bering Sea in 2005, but researchers warn that the spawning biomass of the fishery declined 64 percent between 2004 and 2009. MSC contests that 2004 was a historical high point for Pollack biomass and shouldn’t be used as the baseline.
The researchers also believe that the certification process is fundamentally flawed and does little to ensure sustainability.
One flaw, they say, is that the end use of the seafood is not considered. They pointed to the certification of Antarctic krill as an example, which is harvested mainly to use as fish and pig feed at aquaculture and factory farms.
In addition they think there isn’t enough oversight of the certification process. They point to the fact that certification appeal goes before four arbiters, two of whom have no credentials in fishery science.
Dr. Jennifer Jacquet, one of the authors of the Nature piece and a researcher at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre, believes MSC is succumbing to market pressure for sustainable seafood.
“This is a bureaucratic process,” said Jacquet. “It has a great façade, but it’s not really committed to the science.”
But Kerry Coughlin, MSC regional director for the Americas, believes that such criticisms miss the point. She believes there are enough checks and balances built into the certification process to ensure the accuracy of a fishery’s grade. She also said MSC is designed to help fisheries shoot for realistic goals that ensure fishery sustainability. The mission of MSC isn’t to punish fisheries for imperfections, but to give them an incentive to make sustainability the goal, she said.
“It was designed to be a market-driven program, not an advocacy-driven program, and I think that was the key to its success,” Coughlin said.
Fisheries with MSC certification are paying attention to the debate, but so far there seems no need to panic, said Irvine. It doesn’t surprise him that there are political entanglements in the certification process, he said.
“Welcome to the real world,” said Irvine. “In general, this movement is going to do far more good than harm.”
Levin of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute believes that there are many different paths toward proving sustainability, and that MSC is just one of those ways. But according to Coughlin, certification “is the price of admission at more and more markets,” and some label proving sustainability will be needed in the future as consumer awareness of sustainability issues grows.