The WWF’s un-listing, under threat, of a popular Vietnamese farmed fish has provoked a heated debate in Sweden – the WWF claiming that in exchange it reached a strong agreement for that industry to clean up its business.
Reporters from the Swedish public radio “Matens pris” (The Price of Food) program had visited Vietnamese Iridescent shark (Pangasius hypophthalmus) farms, and returned with reports of greatly harmful effects on the environment, not the least uncontrolled emissions of antibiotics into the nearby Mekong River.
Pollution from the fish farmed threatened the whole ecosystem there with eutrophication, environmentalists claimed, and the reporters described unsatisfactory conditions with more than 300,000 one-kilo fish crammed in a 50×100 metre dam.
The fish in the farm were fed fish meal produced from fish in nearby waters with depleted stocks as a result, depriving the local population of a traditional and important food source, the reporters said.
The Vietnamese iridescent shark, a species of shark catfish native to the rivers of Southeast Asia, has been enthusiastically marketed in many European countries as a whitefish replacement for cod, which is severely threatened in many waters.
Because of the fish farms’ harmful effects on the environment, the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) decided last October to red-list the species on its international fish guides, urging consumers to avoid it.
That listing was removed just two months later, however, with the species moved to a new category in the guide: ”Moving Towards Certification”.
According to the radio program, that had happened after Vietnamese authorities had threatened to throw the WWF out of the country, breaking off all cooperation.
Lasse Gustavsson, Executive Conservation Director for WWF-International in Geneva and formerly CEO of WWF-Sweden, who actually signed the agreement, confirmed that version but eagerly claimed that his organisation did the right thing.
“You told the story, but missed the point”, he said, interviewed in the program.
“We changed the listing, not because we were under threat – which we were, but because of the commitments they made”.
The agreement the Vietnamese have signed, Gustavsson said, includes a plan where 75 percent of the iridescent shark production will live up to certification requirements by 2015, as compared to 0.5 percent now.“After an intensive dialogue with the Vietnamese government and the Vietnamese fishing industry, we have found a common solution which will mean much good to the protection of the nature and greatly improve the production of iridescent shark in Vietnam”, he said in a press statement from WWF-Sweden.
“We have not bowed down to any government, but in a locked situation we attained a strong agreement”.
“Already in a few years 75 percent of that export will be certified. That benefits both the environment around the Mekong River and consumers”, he said.