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Bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops aduncus. (Photo Credit: Serguei S. Dukachev/CC BY-SA 3.0)
EII's 'dolphin-safe' certification credibility questioned
(WORLDWIDE, 4/9/2014)
A new study carried out by researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands investigates whether competition between fishery sustainability standards leads to certification programmes that strengthen their parameters or lower their requirements and allow companies to "greenwash" their image with weak compliance criteria.
The study, developed by the Environmental Policy Group and published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, stresses the conflicts between the Earth Island Institute's (EII), the group behind the so-called "Dolphin-safe" label, and the Marine Stewardship Council's (MSC) sustainable seafood certification programme are playing a significant role in the hold-up of certified fish reaching the market.
Researchers remarked that the threat of market exclusion forces the acceptance of a a particular certification system and can override the relational, dynamic characteristic of credibility, informed the international group Campaign for Eco-Safe Tuna.
The research study outlines that the first industrial purse seine tuna fishery to be MSC certified was the free-school, FAD-free purse seine fishery in the waters of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), which was stimulated by a partnership between the PNA secretariat and the Netherlands-based company Sustunable BV (located in the Netherlands), leading to the creation of the Pacifical brand.
The authors highlight that there is no transparency as to how decisions are made within the EIL, which in turn leads to questions of accountability to consumers as well as the tuna industry.
The report concludes that "complying with the Dolphin Safe standard represents the lowest common dominator of sustainability and does not require a company to make any improvements to their practices to achieve certification."
Researchers also pointed out that without a network-level change, the impact of more credible labels that foster innovation, such as MSC, may remain limited for tuna, unless the industry players remove or substantially modify the scope of EII's authority. It stresses that an end needs to be put to the innovation stalemate.
The study states that "while the stalemate appears to be in the advantage of the EII Dolphin Safe label, the MSC face a difficult task in its resolution; they have to maintain the credibility of their standards and continue their independence, while at the same time remaining beholden to other actors in the tuna GPN (global production network) to challenge the authority of the EII."
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