Greenpeace and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are claiming victory in their campaign against Tesco and the cut-price tuna brand Oriental & Pacific.
An investigation into the tinned tuna brand revealed it uses a fishing method that kills sharks, rays and turtles. The campaign launched early last month calling for Tesco to pull the brand, but Britain’s biggest supermarket refused to act. Now the manufacturers of Oriental & Pacific have written to Greenpeace saying that from end of April 2015 it will only sell sustainable-sourced tuna.
Greenpeace has welcomed the move, but Tesco still comes in for stinging criticism. Greenpeace says that the supermarket had previously committed to making its own-brand tuna sustainable, but as soon as it fulfilled that promise it then introduced ‘unsustainable’ Oriental & Pacific tuna, in what Greenpeace calls “a stroke undermining its public commitment to protecting the oceans”.
Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall also welcomed the news, but said, “It really shouldn't need an investigation like ours to reveal this sort of thing - our big retailers need to make sure that customers have the information they need when they are choosing what to put in their basket. So I call on Tesco to insist that Oriental & Pacific has a clear label stating the catch method, to make sure we can trust these commitments. In the meantime, I don't think anyone should buy a tin of tuna that doesn't say how it was caught."
