Ten of the world’s largest seafood companies have committed to increase their efforts to strengthen sustainable practices.
The Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS) initiative, which has been facilitated by Stockholm Resilience Centre, will address key topics affecting ocean health and seafood sustainability, including illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and modern slavery.
“The ocean cannot wait and we have the responsibility to make a difference,” said SeaBOS managing director Knut Nesse.
SeaBOS companies are already piloting and testing new technologies for traceability in their global supply chains. Earlier this month, SeaBOS joined forces with the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability to improve existing global standards.
Together they will develop a new set of “voluntary industry norms”. A statement read: “Global industry standards for seafood traceability are urgently needed to eliminate costly and unnecessary barriers between the dozens of incompatible, proprietary traceability systems that exist today, and to help guide governments towards the harmonisation of standards affecting seafood trade.”
Supply chain traceability is a key issue for food companies, with many looking to work together in pre-competitive alliances to improve standards.
In October, Aramark, Compass Group, Elior Group, IKEA Food Services, Nestlé, Sodexo and Unilever launched the Global Coalition for Animal Welfare (GCAW). In the next 12 months, they hope to come up with a plan for how to improve standards in five key areas: cage-free production; broiler chicken welfare; farmed fish welfare; antimicrobial resistance; and global standards for transport and slaughter.
The full GDST/SeaBOS statement is available here.
Further details of SeaBOS are available here.
