Two major groups of stakeholders from the On the Hook and Make Stewardship Count campaigns published a joint letter to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) calling for an independent review of its standard and its application.

The groups membership includes celebrity chef and campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, NGOs, scientists and MPs, among others.

The letter follows the UK Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee’s (EAC) recent Sustainable Seas inquiry.

The EAC published its final report on Jan. 17, in which it recommended that: “To ensure continued consumer confidence in the Marine Stewardship Council certification, we recommend the MSC addresses specific criticisms raised by WWF, professor Callum Roberts and others into its five-year review and strengthens its standard accordingly. These criticisms include its unit of assessment, the need to factor in carbon from ships into its standard, concerns about shark finning and barriers to entry for small scale fisheries.”

The report also urged the review be transparent and independently evaluated.

In a res

The EAC report is not the first time that critical improvements to the current standard have been requested.

In Jan. 2018, the Make Stewardship Count coalition of more than 80 NGOs and experts raised serious concerns in an open letter. WWF Germany endorsed this call for improvements and WWF International published similar requests in March 2018.

Just last week, BirdLife International published a new review which finds that being certified by the MSC does not guarantee that a fishery is addressing bycatch and recommends that the MSC implement serious improvements to their bycatch requirements.

The On the Hook/ Make Stewardship Count letter notes that if the MSC is of the view that an independent review of its standard is satisfied by reference to compliance with ISEAL and the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI), the signatories have a number of concerns.

These concerns include one of ISEAL’s Board Members being the MSC’s chief program officer, Nicolas Guichoux. Furthermore, that GSSI and ISEAL do not act as a review of the MSC’s standard, but rather set out globally applicable minimum criteria under which specific eco-certification and labeling initiatives can develop.

“The Fisheries Standard Review started in 2018 and will conclude in 2021, allowing time for thorough consideration of the concerns raised," said said Erin Priddle, UK Program Director for the MSC.

"The proposal from On the Hook and Make Stewardship Count to complete an additional review ahead of the Fisheries Standard Review suggests they do not appreciate the scale of the task of reviewing a 700-page Standard, together with new developments in science and fisheries management. Their proposal for an additional review, and their proposed timescale for this, is not in line with the Environmental Audit Committee’s recommendations.”

With the exception of carbon emissions, all of the subjects raised by these campaigns have been identified as topics to be included in this review, or in separate consultations taking place in 2019, Priddle added.

Fisheries

Pressure mounting for independent review of MSC standards