Several huge American fast food/restaurant chains, including McDonald’s, seem to be jumping on the train to save the world’s dwindling fish stocks.
“We know that if we go raping and pillaging it today, there’s nothing left for tomorrow,” Ken Conrad, the owner of the chain of 10 Libby Hill seafood restaurants in North Carolina and Virginia and chairman of the National Fisheries Institute, a seafood-industry trade group, told the Wall Street Journal.
“We know where weaknesses are and a tremendous amount is being done to address those challenges”, affirms Gavin Gibbons, a media spokesman for the institute. “The idea that vast fisheries broadly are headed to wholesale collapse contains a healthy dose of hyperbole and doesn’t recognize much of the work being done.”
McDonald’s today uses five different whitefish species for its famous Filet-o-Fish sandwich – but it used to be different. Until the late 1980s, the global chain depended solely on North Atlantic cod for the sandwich – until the whole stock off eastern Canada collapsed, which forced a fishing moratorium.
Suppliers and harvesters “destroyed the whole fishing area”, says Gary Johnson, senior director of McDonald’s global supply chain.
McDonald’s, which buys 50,000 tonnes of whitefish a year, now judges fisheries on three factors, he says: how closely they are monitored in order to root out illegal fishing; whether enough fish are left to allow the stock to recover; and the toll taken on the environment from the fishing methods being used. McDonald’s claims the vast majority of its fish now comes from sources that meet sustainability guidelines, such as those given by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).
After stopping to buy Eastern Baltic cod in 2007, due to the reported problems with the stock, McDonald’s resumed the import this year, following positive signs of recovery.
Some environmentalists still question the chain’s choice of ingredient in their sandwiches, however. Greenpeace points to the use of Alaska pollock, which the organisation claims bereaves some sea lions and seals of an important food source.
McDonald’s replied that it only buys pollock from fisheries that third party approves as sustainable.
“The state of global fisheries is such”, comments John Hocevar, Greenpeace’s ocean-campaigns director.
“The big chains don’t have a sustainable source. They’ve just found a less bad source.”