Safeway Inc. has announced that its own brand skipjack (chunk-light) canned tuna will be responsibly caught using free-school purse-seine methods.
The company will transition to the purse-seine method by the end of the year. Free-school tuna is caught by purse-seiners using traditional methods of spotting schools of fish using radar and sonar, while captains employ powerful binoculars to spot birds attracted by schools of tuna.
Joe Ennen, Senior Vice President of Consumer Brands, said the new sourcing policy is an important step in addressing the consumer demand for a more sustainably sourced product without compromising quality.
Safeway is implementing these new specifications at a time when the tuna fishing industry is finding better ways to address the significant negative ecosystem impacts associated with purse-seine netted tuna fishing, a method that employs fish aggregating devices (FADs). Safeway's move to eliminate FAD-caught tuna is part of the effort to make its branded tuna across the shelf stable category more responsibly sourced and to also enhance the company's "Dolphin Safe" tuna commitments made years ago to Earth Island Institute.
Safeway is in the process of instituting additional specifications for responsibly sourced albacore tuna caught on longline vessels with improved fishing techniques. Safeway brand "responsibly caught" tuna is the first brand in North America to make this important move.
"Sourcing responsibly fished tuna is vital to marine ecosystem health,” said Phil Gibson, Safeway's Group Director of Seafood. "We are pleased to include the canned tuna category in our company's Comprehensive Sustainable Seafood Policy."
