July 17, 2013 — A huge and sometimes controversial global project to label certain fish as ‘sustainable’ has produced the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of its own work.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) — which has been praised by some scientists and damned by others — says that it has identified nearly 400 separate improvements in fisheries that have received its stamp of approval, which brings consumer cachet and higher prices.
However, critics say that the in-house report does not address many of their concerns about the MSC, which they say can potentially mislead consumers by certifying fish stocks that are not harvested sustainably or should not be fished at all.
David Agnew, an environmental scientist and standards director at the MSC, which is based in London, rejects those criticisms. He says that the report shows improvements in multiple fisheries as a result of the certification programme. “The thing that is really startling is practically every fishery that is entering the programme is making improvements that can be tracked,” he told Nature.