FAD Use Takes A Hit In Dutch Tuna Ranking

Greenpeace Netherlands has investigated seven canned tuna brands and private labels in the country to examine what species of tuna they source and how it is fished in order to rank their sustainability efforts, concluding that the use of FADs stands in the way for most of the brands in becoming sustainable.

Tuna caught by pole and line is regarded as the most sustainable in the study, but the report does not mention the MSC stamp being used on some products, additionally free-school caught tuna.

The NGO research shows that six out of the seven brands use tuna which is fished using FADs and claims that the use of FADs, “lokvlotten” in Dutch, is a major problem on the canned tuna market. It calls on one of the market leaders, John West, to stop using tuna fished by this method.

The report goes on to accuse the Thai Union owned brand of delivering “false promises”, as according to Greenpeace Netherlands, five years ago John West made the commitment to only sell FAD-free tuna by the end of 2016. John West already has some references that are MSC certified, a portion of its range, but this is not mentioned.

“Based on their own data, we see that 95 percent of their tuna is still captured by lokvlotten in the Netherlands,” GP writes.

The other brands and labels investigated were Fish Tales, DeepBlue, Princes and Rio Mare, as well as Aldi private label Golden Seafood and Lidl private label Nixe.

Princes is another major canned tuna player on the market, which according to the NGO made the same promise as John West in 2011, but still more than 90 percent of its tuna is FAD-caught. The brand has made the move however to make some of its range MSC certified, and earlier this year expanded this with MSC free-school caught skipjack tuna from the PNA through Pacifical. The Bolton owned brand Rio Mare, which also has a big presence on Dutch supermarket shelves, consists of 69 percent FAD caught tuna, the study states.

All of these three brands in fact, have MSC certification on some of their products in the Dutch market, mostly purse seine free-school tuna, a factor which is not noted in the report.

According to the study, only one of the seven brands deserves to be named as sustainable and that is the Dutch brand Fish Tales, as GP states it does not use overfished species of tuna, and that its tuna is fished by pole and line, which according to Greenpeace is the most sustainable fishing method. Fad fishing and fad-free fishing.