Marine Stewardship Council

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) operates a global seafood certification program where wild capture fisheries can become certified as sustainable. Fisheries are certified against a rigorous, scientific methodology by an independent third-party accredited certifier during the MSC Full Assessment process. The MSC sustainable fisheries standard has 3 overarching principles that every fishery must prove that it meets:

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  • Principle 1: Sustainable fish stocks- The fishing activity must be at a level which is sustainable for the fish population. Any certified fishery must operate so that fishing can continue indefinitely and is not overexploiting the resources. 
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  • Principle 2: Minimizing environmental impact- Fishing operations should be managed to maintain the structure, productivity, function and diversity of the ecosystem on which the fishery depends.
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  • Principle 3: Effective management- The fishery must meet all local, national and international laws and must have a management system in place to respond to changing circumstances and maintain sustainability.

These three principles are further supported by 23 detailed criteria that fall under the respective principles.

 
 

The MSC assessment has 7 steps to certification:

  1. Fishery announcement and assessment team formation
  2. Building the assessment tree
  3. Information gathering, stakeholder meetings, and scoring
  4. Client and peer review
  5. Public review of the draft assessment report
  6. Final report and determination
  7. Public certification report and certificate issue

The MSC has a scoring system where each of the criteria are scored individually, averaged at the principle level, and then averaged overall to determine if the fishery has passed the assessment. There are three major scoring thresholds in the MSC assessment of fisheries- 60, 80, 100.

  • If any of the criteria score below 60 the fishery automatically fails assessment.
  • Each principle score must average at least 80 to be eligible for certification and 100 is the highest score.
  • Additionally, for fisheries that are certified, for any criteria scores that fall between the score of 60 & 80, conditions are put in place that the fishery must meet to increase their score to 80 or above.
  • Once certified, a fishery's certification lasts for five years and requires annual audits.
  • At the end of five years, the fishery is fully assessed once again against the MSC standard for sustainable fisheries.
 

The Marine Stewardship Council also oversees a Chain of Custody certification standard to ensure that the certified sustainable fishery products are traced throughout the supply chain. Any company wishing to sell product as MSC-certified must have MSC Chain of Custody certification for each species they wish to sell accordingly. The MSC Chain of Custody primarily assesses that processes are in place to track the MSC-certified seafood and keep it separate from non-certified seafood in the supply chain. These certifications are also completed by an independent, accredited third-party certifier and are valid for three years. Additionally, any company wishing to use the MSC ecolabel on products or restaurant / foodservice operation using the ecolabel on menus must enter into a separate Ecolabel Licensing Agreement with the MSC.

 

For purposes of FishChoice, suppliers with MSC Chain of Custody are identified whenever the ecolabel is listed in the respective column in the browse list and on the product detail page. FishChoice does not identify whether or not companies have an MSC Ecolabel Licensing Agreement and thus the right to display the ecolabel on bulk packaging, retail products, or menu items.

 

Click here to view all the MSC certified products on FishChoice and visit the Marine Stewardship Council website to learn more.