June 30, 2021 — American shoppers cruising down the seafood aisle — even those hundreds of miles away from a working coastline — are increasingly concerned about the health of the ocean.
The decline of fish populations and ocean health is the sixth highest environmental concern worldwide, but Americans prioritize it even higher — ranking ocean health as their third highest environmental concern, according to 2020 survey conducted by independent research and strategy consultancy, Globescan.
Love for the ocean is translating into a desire to protect it — especially when Americans go to the grocery store. Consumers are ready to go to bat for sustainable seafood and companies that prove their willingness to protect the ocean.
Some 57 percent of 19,000 consumers surveyed in the United States and Canada are willing to change their buying habits to reduce their impact on the environment, according to a survey conducted by IBM and The National Retail Federation in 2020. The same is true of seafood buyers: According to the 2020 Globescan survey, 55 percent of U.S. seafood consumers agreed that in order to protect the ocean, fish and seafood should be consumed only from sustainable sources. Furthermore, the study found 65 percent of Americans believe supermarkets should remove all unsustainable fish and seafood products from their shelves.
When shoppers are standing in grocery stores, how do they know the full story behind the seafood in front of them? Oftentimes, they look for eco-labels, a third-party label or logo which identifies products proven to be environmentally preferable, which have proliferated in recent decades. The Globescan study found that 64 percent of Americans believe retailers’ and brands’ claims about sustainability and the environment need to be clearly labeled by an independent organization.