According to The Wave Newsletter, the Board of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has decided not to expand the current MSC ecolabel to include farmed seafood.
At this week’s MSC Board meeting in Thailand, it was agreed that the MSC would not develop its current certification and ecolabelling scheme to cover farmed fish and shellfish – at least not for the time being. This ends a long-standing debate within the organisation that began already around its conception in 1997.
It happens at a time when MSC certification is expanding at great pace, with new reports on fisheries undergoing pre-assessment or certification almost every week. Today, the MSC logo sits on a range of different seafood products marketed by retailers all across the world. Among the later additions is the Swedish trap and gillnet pikeperch fisheries in Lake Hjälmaren – the world’s first certified freshwater fishery to be certified.