Does your grocer sell farmed salmon?
Are you curious about which local grocery stores to support when you buy your salmon?
A new SeaChoice report shows the good, bad and ugly of farmed salmon in Canadian grocery stores.
These findings have prompted SeaChoice to call on the federal government to take steps to do what certifications in the marketplace have failed to do: protect wild salmon.
Add your voice to those telling grocers to stop selling unsustainable farmed salmon.
Click to tell grocers to protect wild salmon!
The 2023 Seafood Progress audit found:
- Farmed salmon scores were low for all but two grocers.
- Most grocers and the brands they sell continue to rely on farmed salmon certifications that are weak. The Aquaculture Stewardship Council and Best Aquaculture Practices certifications fail to protect wild salmon from disease and sea lice impacts from farms.
- Most grocers avoid labelling products as “farmed.” While all grocers label “wild” on some seafood, nearly all avoid labelling “farmed” seafood, including salmon. Without proper labelling, shoppers are unable to make informed choices. METRO and Costco are the only grocers to label their farmed salmon as such.
- Two grocers stood out above the rest. Sobeys was the only grocer to improve its score (from 34 per cent to 68 per cent) — largely because it has put in the work to sell more closed-containment farmed salmon that doesn’t endanger wild salmon. Buy-Low Foods continues to be the only grocer to refrain from selling any farmed salmon.
- All grocers have committed not to sell genetically engineered salmon. This marketplace consensus is welcomed given genetically engineered salmon’s potential risk to wild salmon.
Read the full report and demand grocers do better on farmed salmon here.
Open-net pen farmed salmon remains the Achilles heel for Canadian grocers’ sustainable seafood commitments, with nearly all receiving failing scores for their lack of progress to remove farmed salmon from stores or take actions to improve their sourcing, according to SeaChoice’s latest Seafood Progress report.
