Whole Foods announced today that it will stop selling seafood that isn't designated "sustainable" by the Blue Ocean Institute, an advocacy group, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. The popular chain says it will drop unsustainable seafood for good on Earth Day, April 22nd, which the company says is a year earlier than its target goal. Starting next month, octopus, gray sole, skate, Atlantic halibut and Atlantic cod caught by trawls will no longer be sold at Whole Foods. Instead, the AP reports that Whole Foods will stock sustainable replacements like cod caught on lines and halibut from the Pacific.
"In the long term, what we're really looking to do is help reverse trends of overfishing and bi-catch, so that really we can move the industry as a whole toward greater sustainability," said seafood quality standards coordinator Carrie Brownstein. In 2008, Whole Foods and 19 other supermarket chains scored an F from Greenpeace when the group issued its first seafood sustainability scorecard. Now 15 out of those 20 supermarkets all have passing grades.
"It's pretty impressive to see that it was an issue that really wasn't on most of these companies' radar," John Hocevar, Greenpeace's oceans campaign director, tells the AP. "And with encouragement from us and many others, they really did for the most part step up." The United Nations estimates that 80 percent of the world's marine populations are fully fished, over-exploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion.
Last year Target eliminated all farm-raised salmon from their owned brands, replacing it with wild-caught Alaskan salmon instead. And this month BJ's Wholesale Club announced a policy to ensure its seafood is sustainable or on track to meet sustainability standards by 2014.
