As predicted, Greenpeace’s ranking of grocers’ seafood sustainability practices don’t measure anything except compliance with Greenpeace’s own extremist agenda.
Where is the science? There is none. The survey is based on loaded questions and answers like “Do you encourage consumers to write articles, Letters to the Editor, opinion pieces, etc. . . . to advocate for improved sustainability and reduced fishing pressure . . .?” And “Do your seafood suppliers refuse to buy seafood from operators on the Greenpeace blacklist?” The message was bluntly clear: If you don’t get with the Greenpeace program you can expect a failing grade on the survey.
And what is the methodology behind the rankings? How are the responses calculated, weighted and trended year after year? We don’t know because Greenpeace won’t disclose its methodology. If we were to hazard a guess, we’d say the results are whatever Greenpeace wants the results to be.
The fact is Greenpeace simply made up its survey and published its predetermined results not with a stack of data but with a press release, confident that some in the media will still treat Greenpeace with wholly undeserved deference.
But Greenpeace is a “multi-issue extremist” organization with no authority or insight to offer on seafood sustainability, supermarket operations, or retail consumer behavior. Its unscientific rankings ignore globally recognized sustainability organizations, standards and certifications including the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF). For example the rankings give stores lower scores for carrying fish that Greenpeace has decided are at risk, regardless of responsible management or internationally recognized certifications.
The Greenpeace ranking of grocers’ seafood sustainability policies and practices is a PR gimmick. It’s a stunt devised to give Greenpeace the appearance of authenticity, when in fact it’s just a platform for the group to alarm consumers, create fear about negative publicity for grocers and fundraise. Rather than working with the seafood community to develop real solutions, Greenpeace bullies companies while soliciting donations to fill its coffers.
The “rank and spank” survey tactic is getting a bit old and we suspect few grownup journalists will take it seriously. . But the bottom line is that consumers — juggling a job, a family and a budget — have better things to worry about than what Greenpeace thinks is the most obedient supermarket chain. Here’s hoping they printed their report on recyclable paper.
It should come as no surprise that Greenpeace is trying to capitalize on Earth Day coverage to build visibility for its false attacks on canned tuna sustainability. After all, this eco-extremist group seizes every opportunity (no relevance needed) to repeat its baseless accusations about the health of tuna stocks used for canned tuna.
What is surprising are the lengths to which Greenpeace will say and do anything, including contradicting its own demands, using any media attention to rally its supporters to give money, signing more petitions and even hosting useless recipe contests.
Case in point. Greenpeace applauds Huffington Post’s unscientific attempt to portray canned tuna as a product that is high in CO2 emissions. Ironic from an organization that has spent a lot of time and money promoting carbon intensive pole-and-line tuna fishing as a sustainability panacea to replace the less carbon intensive tuna catch methods currently used today. In fact, pole-and-line fishing gear uses almost 300 percent more fuel than purse seine fisheries. Not to mention that pole-and-line fishing cannot meet the existing demand for tuna, which means denying millions of families access to an affordable, nutritious and ready-to-eat protein.
But hey, this is Greenpeace we’re talking about. Facts don’t matter, only self-promotion and fundraising — regardless of costs to the same environment it purports to save and those pesky humans who need healthy foods to survive.
It’s something we’ve been telling you for years. When Greenpeace talks about “emotionalizing” an issue that means . . . lying about an issue. And there’s been plenty of emotionalizing when it comes to canned tuna over the past year. A court in New Zealand has had it with Greenpeace raising money off of deception and found that when Greenpeace claimed 20,000 birds had died as the result of an oil spill there it wasn’t just mistaken, it was deceiving the public after official figures showed 1,300 birds had died from the spill.
The fund raising model that pushes Greenpeace staffers and volunteers alike to bring in the needed $700,000 a day it takes to keep the lights on, is one that makes them almost compelled to exaggerate or outright lie. Just think about it—you can’t motivate your base to donate by describing the loss of 1,300 birds, so you bump it up to 20,000 and see how that plays.
If Greenpeace could stick to the science and facts rather than fundraising, perhaps it’d be less marginalized in the court of public opinion and spend less time losing in actual court.
Greenpeace’s narrative prior to the WCPFC Guam meeting would have you believe that no group but theirs cares about tuna conservation issues in the Pacific (or anywhere, for that matter). But Greenpeace’s simultaneous release of its PR survey results in Canada, otherwise known as a retailer ranking shows literally no difference in the goals of Greenpeace and the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), well, except for one. ISSF and it’s members including the major US tuna brands, are actively doing something about it.
CBC News news in Canada writes that Canadian retailers were judged based on:
Have a sustainability policy.
Avoid using tuna from threatened stocks and those caught using “destructive” fishing methods.
Are able to trace the tuna they use to its source.
Promote marine reserves and domestic, coastal fisheries.
Guess what? ISSF is doing all of these things and more. And the conservationists, marine biologists and oceanic experts who form the ISSF are achieving this progress using hard, scientific data. They analyzed research conducted by the WCPFC to conclude that the Commission must
Completely close purse seine fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Oceans (WCPO);
Stop all transactions with purse seine vessels that transship at-sea to minimize illegal, unreported and unauthorized (IUU) fishing activities;
Adopt a limited entry, closed-vessel registry to reduce the number of fishing vessels to a level that is commensurate with the productivity of the WCPO fisheries; and
Prohibit deliberate purse seine setting around whale sharks, as well as, adopt mitigation measures for oceanic white tip sharks and blue sharks.
The ISSF invests in superior technology to track vessels, monitor tuna species and discover the best methods of reducing bycatch. It created a searchable database of conservation measures taken by regional fishery management organizations and another one to track vessels and make it harder for them to bypass regulations. It hosts workshops with skippers to communicate best practices and even studies vessels’ carbon dioxide emissions to pinpoint the most environmentally friendly fishing techniques.
ISSF members don’t feel like someone else should do something; they know that they have to work right alongside fishermen, tuna companies and political entities to initiate progress.
And then there’s Greenpeace — a day late and millions of dollars short — sailing around the high seas aboard the Esperanza looking for a media opportunity and footage for fundraising. Greenpeace purports to work with fishing vessels, but instead, its oceans campaigners vandalize them by painting “PIRATE” on the hull. Greenpeace activists churn out petitions, vilify tuna companies, and blame government officials, yet they incredulously think that constitutes a legitimate contribution to sustainability efforts.
So every time you read “Greenpeace’s report shows” or “Greenpeace demands that” just know that the group’s parroting the scientific findings of someone else’s critical investment and expertise. Of course, don’t expect Greenpeace to give credit where credit’s due or admit that it’s just along for the (yacht) ride.
Greenpeace thinks it can call the shots by issuing rankings, and unfortunately, the media lets it get away with nonsense. CBC News (Canada) called out 5 brands that “remained near the bottom of Greenpeace’s list because … they use tuna caught by fishing methods that Greenpeace Canada considers destructive…”
See it? Greenpeace’s list. Greenpeace’s rules. Greenpeace ranks. And Greenpeace spanks.
At least one of the brands “near the bottom” never completed the Greenpeace survey. Did that stop Greenpeace from ranking the brand? Of course not. Greenpeace’s “evaluation” of any brand (or grocery chain or electronics company) is completely subjective, with or without data.
Greenpeace reports, “Pastene did not respond to Greenpeace’s survey this year and continues to skirt any discussion on the sustainability of its tuna. The company’s lack of transparency should raise a red flag…” Such audacity coming from an organization that itself won’t reveal the criteria by which it judges each participating (or not participating) canned tuna brand or the scientific methodology of its survey instrument to give it a modicum of validity. Then again, Greenpeace wears its hypocrisy on its sleeve.
Greenpeace continues to demonstrate that it lacks the credibility necessary to be taken seriously. It judges companies’ sustainability efforts but won’t actually commit to partaking in serious dialogue on the issues at hand. It purports to work with tuna companies and sustainability advocates, yet it repeatedly refuses to collaborate with committed conservationists, marine environmentalists, governments, scientists and others under the umbrella of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation. Instead of ranking companies and pulling media stunts, it should join the ranks of dedicated stakeholders working towards long-lasting solutions.
We applaud Pastene and every other brand, company or store that refuses to acknowledge Greenpeace’s legitimacy to issue non-science based ultimatums.
To save you the pain of trying to navigate Greenpeace’s largely incoherent blog post, we’ve untangled a handful of the most nonsensical
ramblings:
Greenpeace makes it official: Giving up. Moving on.
Greenpeace writes, “we’ve shifted our focus from pressuring politicians to campaigning where big business hurts the most — the markets where they sell their products,” which really means that the tactic of trying to influence decision makers from up close has failed. Why? Because no one takes them seriously when they protest in silly costumes and deliver petitions ad nauseam that contain no substance.
Similarly, next week Greenpeace will picket outside the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Guam but won’t bother joining the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation’s stakeholders meeting, also in Guam. Perhaps they feel they’ve marginalized themselves to such an extent that sitting at the table with tuna sustainability heavyweights — after just having shed sweaty, giant, plushy shark costumes in the lobby — might highlight their status as fundraisers not real stakeholders?
Greenpeace uncovers the greatest conspiracy since the “Hollywood moon landing.”
Apparently, tuna companies “want to see […] profits grow year after year until the tuna is gone and they can then move on to invest in some other species.” Seriously Greenpeace? Could they possibly believe that the canned tuna industry’s business model hinges on decimating a millennia-old profession so it can “move on”? You don’t need an MBA to realize that assertion is ludicrous.
Greenpeace promotes its solution in search of a problem.
As the posting spirals towards blather it produces interesting froth like this, “skipjack tuna… would have a better chance of survival if it were caught using pole and line method of purse seine fishing [sic] without the use of Fish Aggregating Devices.” That’s right, Greenpeace suggests that skipjack, a tuna specie that is healthy in every ocean on the planet would have a better chance of “survival” if fishing methods were altered. Despite the fact that no accredited or even slightly sensible fisheries scientist on Earth is suggesting that skipjack is going the way of the dodo, Greenpeace is fighting for its very survival. Is that meant to be hyperbole or humor?
Greenpeace wants cleaner air but simultaneously promotes fishing methods that will increase the carbon footprint.
Greenpeace thinks that “if the numbers of tuna fishing vessels were to be reduced to levels that would allow fish populations to recover, we could have tuna and viable fishing industries for the future and cut the carbon footprint of the tuna fleets as well.” However, maintaining “viable fishing industries” with the FAD free fishing would actually increase the carbon footprint by four-fold. Banning FADs and promoting pole and line would mean that many more fishing boats would have to track this highly migratory species. With no way to attract tuna, fishing vessels would be forced to navigate the seas for much longer. How exactly does putting more boats on the water for longer periods of time “cut the carbon footprint”?
These are just a few of the questions provoked by Greenpeace’s latest missive. We hope others — journalists in particular — are also asking, “what is Greenpeace talking about?”
It would be easy to dismiss IntraFish’s take on Greenpeace’s campaign against canned tuna as merely an opinion, everyone is entitled to one. That particular opinion ultimately suggests the marginalized activist group is likely to “permanently change” how tuna is harvested and sold (Another Win For Greenpeace, March 7, 2012).
But rather than take the easy way, perhaps it is more appropriate to ask IntraFish to actually investigate the very real and negative impact Greenpeace’s demands would have on American families’ diets if they ever came to fruition, while probing the group’s goals for ulterior motives and unintended consequences.
IntraFish quotes hyperbolic Greenpeace campaigners lauding retailers, who are bullied into submission, as “progressive, comprehensive and visionary” but does not do the homework that would expose a campaign that is short on facts and long on fundraising.
In between begging for contributions, Greenpeace demands the adoption of “sustainable fishing methods.” But to be truly sustainable such methods would need to meet global demand for tuna without endangering the health of tuna populations for future generations.
And the fact is no one fishing method is able to achieve this crucial goal by itself. But taken together – purse seine netting, Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs), pole and line and other methods are able to sustainably deliver nutritious tuna to millions f consumers around the world.
Greenpeace rails against the use of FADs while extolling the irtue of pole and line fisheries. But left unquestioned is whether Greenpeace’s favorite catch method has any drawbacks of its own.
It’s hard to imagine how many individual fishermen would be needed to catch the 50 million cases of tuna each year that supply the United States alone.
The global tuna fishing fleet would have to expand at an exponential rate and that would have consequences that Greenpeace doesn’t like to discuss.
For example, the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) estimates that pole and line fishing vessels burn 1,070 liters of fuel for every ton of tuna caught, while purse seiners burn only 368
liters to catch the same amount. Never mind that pole and line fishing would quickly exhaust global bait supplies and put undue pressure on juvenile tunas.
Greenpeace also likes to talk about “bycatch.” Catching such a highly migratory fish as tuna in an ocean as large as the Pacific would seem to be an impossible task without snagging something else in the nets, too. Yet purse seiners have combined years of experience with scientific insight to develop an approach that catches tuna nearly 95 percent of the time.
The use of FADs is what made dolphin safe tuna a reality – so there’s more than a touch of irony in promoting an opinion that considers the elimination of FADs the most significant change in tuna fishing practices since the adoption of dolphin protection standards.
And while Greenpeace tells its followers that charismatic sea turtles are among the bycatch, what they don’t tell you is that the total number of sea turtles caught in nets set with FADs is small. In 2009, only nine sea turtle were caught in the entire eastern Pacific Ocean.
You can’t eliminate bycatch, only reduce it. And the tuna fishing community is continually making improvements based on sound science, not sound and fury.
Seafood buyers need to know there are a slew of unasked questions whose answers expose Greenpeace’s tuna campaign as a charade. But such exposition is not a seafood buyer’s job. It’s the Fourth Estates’ job.
Greenpeace is like an alarm bell that never stops ringing. While most people have tuned out Greenpeace’s
shrill warnings after 40 years, some exasperated retailers have given in to Greenpeace in the hope of making the alarm stop.
Unfortunately, surrendering to Greenpeace only encourages them to come back for more. Just ask Mattel,
Bolton or Costco. Immediately following a very public pressure campaign directed at Costco, Greenpeace was quoted saying “… this is a victory for oceans but Costco could go further.”
Rather than parroting Greenpeace’s hyperbole and rhetoric on its opinion pages perhaps it’s time Intrafish devoted some ink to asking hard questions of Greenpeace rather than celebrating its supposed wins.
Earlier this month, Greenpeace sought to remind its supporters that Taiwan’s pledge to better manage Pacific fisheries was full of hot air. How did it plan to do that? By launching a hot air balloon of course. Comically, however, wind prevented the balloon from actually flying. Perhaps that’s a metaphor for Greenpeace’s failure to launch serious reforms.
Let’s juxtapose the latest Greenpeace campaign with efforts undertaken by members of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF). Months earlier, the ISSF analyzed research compiled by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) Scientific Committee. And based on that rigorous scientific evidence, the ISSF developed recommendations to better manage tuna stocks, minimize bycatch and protect endangered species, including:
Complete closure of purse seine fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Oceans (WCPO);
Stop all transactions with purse seine vessels that transship at-sea to minimize illegal, unreported and unauthorized (IUU) fishing activities;
Adopt a limited entry, closed-vessel registry to reduce the number of fishing vessels to a level that is commensurate with the productivity of the WCPO fisheries; and
Prohibit deliberate purse seine setting around whale sharks, as well as, adopt mitigation measures for oceanic white tip sharks and blue sharks.
But apparently, science-based policy is not enough for Greenpeace. Instead, the group thinks that encouraging supporters to sign a petition that briefly mentions FADs, purse seine nets and taking action will translate into real solutions for sustainable fishing. After reaching their goal 50,000 signatures (currently less than 2,000), Greenpeace activists plan to drop the petitions off at the WCPFC meeting in Guam.
Meanwhile, ISSF is also meeting in Guam next week to convene stakeholders and take a serious look at fisheries management issues. Yet again, ISSF invited Greenpeace to collaborate with industry, scientists and conservationists. Predictably, Greenpeace stubbornly refused to join.
That Greenpeace will be in Guam to picket the WCPFC but will ignore the ISSF’s presence is just more evidence (not that we didn’t have enough) that Greenpeace has no intentions of deserting their attention-grabbing gimmicks in order to engage in meaningful tuna sustainability work.
So while the real proponents of tuna sustainability roll up their sleeves it appears Greenpeace is content to gather signatures and gleefully fly hot air balloons.
Posted by TFT-Staff
Thursday, March 8th, 2012
The Greenpeace Retailer Seafood Sustainability Survey and Ranking is a shopworn tactic meant to embarrass retailers and dictate their seafood sourcing practices while generating publicity and dollars for Greenpeace and establishing it as an arbiter of environmental virtue.
Surveys are a tried-and-true PR gimmick intended to capture media attention and Greenpeace’s annual “rank and spank” supermarket ranking and scorecard on seafood sustainability is no different.
The Greenpeace survey is not a measure of your commitment to sustainable seafood. It is merely a scorecard on how closely you align with Greenpeace’s own standards. Greenpeace does not recognize any other organization or certification standard.
You cannot win. Never in the survey’s five-year history has a retailer scored better than 65 points on a 100-point scale.
Retailers who complete the survey are privy to the results only when they’re published in Greenpeace’s annual publication: Carting Away the Oceans.
The latest edition of Carting Away the Oceans (CATO V) told consumers to “Eat less fish. Reducing seafood consumption now can help lessen the pressure on our oceans…” Greenpeace is telling your customers to buy less fresh, frozen and now shelf-stable seafood.
By completing Greenpeace’s survey, retailers simply open themselves up to the activists’ subjective, non-scientific evaluation of their business, while simultaneously helping Greenpeace raise dollars from old and new members.
There is no credible methodology behind the survey.
The Greenpeace survey is not a valid statistical instrument. It is filled with leading and subjective questions that steer to predetermined conclusions. Greenpeace has consistently refused to share its survey methodology with any independent academic or professional research organization. This alone should raise serious doubts about the validity of the survey results.
After years of trying to dictate grocers’ fresh and frozen seafood sourcing, Greenpeace now wants to tell you how to run your shelf stable seafood aisle too. Don’t let them fool you. You are already acting responsibly and sustainably.
The leading canned tuna companies, Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea and StarKist, devote significant resources to the health and sustainability of tuna populations individually and through the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF). No one has more reason to keep tuna flourishing in the oceans than the people who depend on those tuna for their livelihoods. When you buy from these companies you are sourcing sustainable brands and private label tuna.
Greenpeace literally does nothing to study, improve or participate in efforts to limit bycatch, and it devotes zero dollars to tuna sustainability research.
Yet despite its highly publicized antics, Greenpeace has refused to participate in important efforts to limit bycatch or fund scientific research. You have nothing to fear from Greenpeace.
The survey is not a measure of your commitment to sustainable seafood but only a report card on your compliance with Greenpeace’s own standards.
Greenpeace does not endorse any seafood certification program, including highly reputable organizations like the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA).
You are not alone. Greenpeace conducts similar surveys targeting everything from toy packaging to sneakers to your flat screen TV. These surveys are routinely ignored by consumers and have little, if any, impact on sales.
Greenpeace’s scorecard campaign is nothing more than a tired ploy to get media attention and appeal for donor dollars.
Retailers can deny Greenpeace the opportunity to “rank and spank” grocers by simply declining to participate.
Don’t waste your time filling out a survey you can’t possibly win.
No matter how often Greenpeace is invited to sit down with scientists, commercial fishermen, and even other ENGO’s like WWF, the world’s leading conservation organization, Greenpeace always finds a reason to decline the invitation.
Yet it has plenty of time to rally its members to harass tuna companies.
In one recent harassment ploy, Greenpeace directed its supporters to deluge American tuna companies with more than a hundred thousand similarly worded e-mail messages accusing them of “ripping up the sea,” among other things.
The tuna companies saw an opportunity for dialogue with these concerned supporters. If Greenpeace wouldn’t accept the tuna industry’s invitation to participate in an upcoming global meeting about tuna sustainability as they have done previously, perhaps they’d feel different if they knew their supporters wanted them to be part of the global dialogue and solution.
So the tuna companies appealed to the same Greenpeace supporters who wrote to their companies about their sustainability concerns and asked them to contact Greenpeace’s leadership about participating in the global conservation community at the next meeting of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) in Guam.
Apparently, more than one Greenpeace member thought that was a sensible request and e-mailed Casson Trenor, Greenpeace’s U.S. point person for its tuna sustainability initiative with the invitation.
But instead of embracing the invitation, Greenpeace got angry and refused. Embarrassingly, Casson Trenor resentfully tweeted, “tricking well-meaning people into spamming my inbox won’t help the oceans.”
This is astounding for two reasons. First of all, those “spammers” were Trenor’s own supporters, the very same people he had earlier played their emotions and directed to deluge the tuna companies with their sustainability concerns. And second, the e-mails in question were simply inviting Greenpeace to take a seat with the global environmental community and join in the serious tuna sustainability work already ongoing.
While Casson and his people sort out all its conflicting words and actions, people who are serious about tuna sustainability and not just fundraising are saving a place for Greenpeace at the ISSF meeting in Guam.
