Canada Safeway Gets A+ for Sustainable Seafood

Canada Safeway has earned an A+ for shifting its procurement of fresh and frozen seafood to sustainable sources from SeaChoice, creator of an eponymous seafood sustainability award.

Over the past five years, Cananda Safeway has worked toward the goal, resulting in 92 percent of its seafood being from sustainable sources by the end of last year, up from 51 percent in 2012.

Many red-listed species, including Russian king crab, shark, barramundi and squid have been completely eliminated, leaving only a few species, such as salmon and rockfish, according to Vancouver, British Columbia-based SeaChoice. The transition of remaining red-listed species is underway: Red-ranked farmed salmon is being replaced by green-ranked land-based farmed Kuterra salmon, and Canada Safeway is working toward sourcing only yellow-ranked Canadian rockfish.

“Canada Safeway has made great progress by investing in innovative solutions to complex seafood issues, and we are pleased to have concrete next steps in removing the remaining 8 percent of unranked and red-listed seafood,” said Jason Bater, seafood category manager at Thrifty Foods, a banner of Stellarton, Nova Scotia-based Sobeys Inc., Canada Safeway’s parent company.

Canada Safeway teamed with SeaChoice in 2011 as part of a corporate social responsibility mandate. According to SeaChoice, the core of Canada Safeway’s policy noted that by 2015, all fresh and frozen seafood would be sourced from sustainable sources, or be in a credible improvement project.