Greenpeace delivers message to Foodtown

Greenpeace delivers second sustainability message to Foodtown

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Photo: Greenpeace / Fraser Newman

Auckland, 12 August 2009 –Greenpeace, today, hung a large banner on a downtown Auckland Foodtown supermarket and called on it to implement a sustainable seafood policy (1) and remove bottom trawled species, like orange roughy, from its shelves.

The peaceful protest, which also urged consumers to avoid buying unsustainable seafood, followed up last week’s blockade of a bottom trawl vessel which supplied orange roughy to Foodtown.
Orange roughy is at the top of the Greenpeace Red List of 12 species of commercially caught seafoods which should be avoided due to sustainability issues and destructive fishing methods. (2)

This morning activists climbed onto the roof of the Quay St Foodtown and deployed a seven metre banner above the front entrance and under the Foodtown logo which read ‘Costing us our oceans? The Greenpeace mascot for the Save our Seas campaign, Sad Fish, was hung in a net alongside the banner. At street level a model of a large piece of coral in a supermarket trolley was used to illustrate the environmental cost of destructive fishing practices.

At the same time a team of activists entered the store, accompanied by a second Sad Fish mascot, engaged with customers and called on the manager to remove fish caught by destructive fishing methods from the shelves and to make a pledge to introduce a policy to sell only seafood which was truly sustainable.

Greenpeace New Zealand campaign director Chris Harris said the environmental organisation was taking action to highlight that Foodtown and other supermarkets had enormous purchasing power and were able to influence the way the fishing industry operated.

“Supermarkets are directly responsible for the destruction of New Zealand‘s fisheries resource and ocean environment through their purchasing policies. They need to become part of the solution, not part of the problem.

“By implementing a sustainable seafood policy and removing bottom trawled orange roughy from sale, Foodtown will be sending a strong message to the fishing industry that it will only stock seafood which is truly sustainable and caught using methods which are not destructive to the marine environment.”

Truly sustainable seafood did not come from overfished or vulnerable stocks, was not caught illegally, or taken from unmanaged fisheries and was not caught or farmed in ways which were harmful to the marine environment of other marine species, he said.

In May this year, Greenpeace released the report While Stocks Last – Supermarkets and the Future of Seafood (3) outlining the link between seafood retailers, consumers and the fishing industry.

Supermarkets in North America and Europe, which had adopted sustainable seafood policies, were taking New Zealand-caught species like orange roughy and hoki off their shelves as it failed to meet sustainability standards.

Last month United Kingdom supermarket Waitrose confirmed it refused to stock New Zealand caught hoki, despite its sustainability accreditation by the Marine Stewardship Council, as it was caught by bottom trawling. (4) It removed New Zealand orange roughy from its stocks in 2005 for the same reason.

“To maintain New Zealand’s clean, green reputation the fishing industry needs to respond to these messages from the international markets by ensuring it is truly sustainable in every aspect of its operations.”
Last Friday Greenpeace blockaded the bottom trawl vessel Seamount Explorer by chaining it to Brigham St wharf in Westhaven.

Three activists climbed onto the New Zealand owned ship and two locked themselves to the structure. They were removed by police using bolt cutters and all three were arrested. Four other activists in two life rafts which were attached to a heavy cordon chaining the 45 metre trawler to the wharf were also removed by police but not charged. Throughout the 90 minute blockade activists held up banners reading "Foodtown costing us our oceans".

Greenpeace is calling for a network of fully-protected marine reserves covering 40 per cent of the world’s oceans to safeguard them against the ravages of climate change, restore the health of fish stocks, and protect ocean life from habitat destruction and collapse.

(1) http://www.greenpeace.org/international/seafood/changing-your-business/model-policy
(2) http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/sos
(3) http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/press/reports/while-stocks-last
(4) http://www.seafoodsource.com/newsarticledetail.aspx?id=4294967531

ENDS

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