Sustainability Finally on the Way for Bumble Bee?

by Campaign for Eco-Safe Tuna
May 13, 2013

As previously noted by the Tuna Truth Squad, tuna sold in the U.S. by the big three – Bumble Bee, StarKist and Chicken of the Sea – is not considered dolphin-safe by just about any international standard. Now it looks like Bumble Bee might be on the verge of changing that.

SPYGhana.com reported this week that Bumble Bee has announced plans to use sustainably sourced skipjack tuna from Pacifical, co-brand of the eight island nations of Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA). The skipjack will bear an eco-label from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which certified PNA’s skipjack fishing process in 2011.

If Bumble Bee follows through and indeed introduces eco-safe skipjack into the U.S. market, it would be the first of the big three to adopt an internationally accepted dolphin-safe or eco-safe label. The move itself is not a complete abandonment of Bumble Bee’s association with Earth Island Institute’s (EII) “dolphin-safe” labeling scheme. Still, if StarKist and Chicken of the Sea follow suit it could mean the beginning of the end for the less-than-savory “environmental group.”

EII appears to already be feeling the heat. Since earning MSC certification last year, PNA countries have been harassed and threatened by EII:

Earth Island Institute, the US based NGO that is behind a well-known ‘Dolphin Safe’ eco-label is threatening fishers, processors and retailers to ‘blacklist’ them if they do business with the MSC certified Pacifical brand of the PNA skipjack…PNA commercial manager Maurice Brownjohn warns that the big three American tuna brands still have to deal with the issue of US based dolphin action group Earth Island Institute that threatens to ‘blacklist’ any company that supplies or trades the MSC skipjack from PNA waters.

What is curious – and perhaps revealing of true motives – is that EII would even bother to attack alternative labels for skipjack tuna in the Western and Central Pacific. Dolphin mortalities have never been a problem when fishing for skipjack tuna because they do not swim in proximity to dolphins. According to PNA commercial manager Maurice Brownjohn, this makes the MSC certification so much more important because it “not only protects dolphins, but looks after the sustainability of all species in the ocean.” Also important to note is that the MSC certification follows the same guideline as the AIDCP and is backed by Greenpeace, Pew and WWF.