Canada seafood giant Cooke will have a new global chief sustainability officer to oversee the company's growing seafood portfolio.
On Wednesday, Cooke named Michael Szemerda to the role. Szemerda has been with Cooke for 30 years and currently works as the vice president of saltwater operations for Cooke Aquaculture’s North American operations.
Szemerda will oversee all environmental and regulatory programs, industry certifications, and sustainability initiatives across Cooke’s global wild and farmed subsidiaries.
Cooke's sustainability hire follows several major seafood companies making hires for similar roles in recent months. Last month Seattle-based pollock giant American Seafoods hired Tim Fitzgerald as the company's new chief sustainability officer.
Cooke said it is waiting until Szemerda moves into his new role before filling the position he is vacating.
Cooke produces one billion pounds of seafood annually. Thirty percent of its production comes from the harvesting of wild species such as salmon, whitefish, and shellfish. Seventy percent of the seafood it produces is farmed species that include Atlantic salmon, steelhead trout, Pacific shrimp, seabass, and seabream.
On Tuesday, the company finalized a deal to sell groundfish processing vessel Northern Victor to a consortium of community development quota groups (CDQs) and Japanese giant Maruha Nichiro.
