The organization Debio comes with its own environmental label for sustainable Norwegian fish products. With that, they will make it easier for Norwegian consumers to choose short-traveled and sustainable seafood in the grocery store. And they want to ensure that the fish has not traveled around the world on its way to the freezer. – It is neither good for the climate, Norwegian jobs nor the quality of the fish, says the daily manager of Debio, Johan Frøstrup. Johan Frøstrup in Debio. Photo: Debio Wants to set the standard With the brand scheme, Debio makes demands for, among other things, three things. The fish must be: caught in Norway without the use of bottom trawls. processing, i.e. working from raw material to finished product, in Norway. MSC certified. The latter means that the product must come from sustainable fishing. The mark of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an environmental mark for fish and seafood products and is certified by an independent and approved certification body, according to the Consumer Council. – Here we build on good and established third-party systems. The MSC certification ensures that the stocks are sustainably managed, says Frøstrup. The purpose of the new environmental label is to help consumers choose sustainable seafood. Photo: Debio Creates environmental emissions The organization wants to ensure that the seafood that gets the label is not caught with bottom trawls, a previously debated method of catching fish. – Now we make it easier for environmentally conscious consumers to opt out of bottom-caught, long-travelled, double and triple frozen seafood, says Frøstrup. A trawl is a funnel that is towed by a boat. Many of these are towed along the bottom of the sea to catch fish, hence the name bottom trawling. When these trawl bags are dragged along the bottom, large amounts of CO₂ are released. Trawling in Norway A trawl is a bag-shaped net that is towed along the bottom or in the water after the vessel. In Norway, bottom trawls are used in fishing for cod, haddock, pollock and prawns. Trawling takes place in the same fields year after year and the fields make up a smaller part of the Norwegian sea areas and the fields are located in the most productive parts. Between 30 and 50 percent of the cold-water corals along the Norwegian coast are damaged or destroyed by bottom trawling, according to the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research. The number of licenses to operate trawl fishing is regulated and no new licenses are issued. A series of rules specify how the trawl should look to ensure minimal interference with small fish and bycatch. More than 40 percent of the Norwegian economic zone currently has special protection against bottom trawling. A ban on trawling applies to 19 of the largest and most important coral reefs in the country. The fishing industry has also voluntarily protected an area in the Arctic that is twice the size of France against bottom trawling in 2016. Work is being done to develop technology that ensures that the fishing equipment does not destroy the seabed or uproot the carbon that is buried in the sediments. But there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure all bottom contact in trawl fishing. Source: Norwegian Fisheries Association/Ministry of Fisheries According to the Institute of Marine Research, around half of all catches are caught with trawls globally. According to a study from 2021, which for the first time gave figures on the discharge as a result of bottom trawling, the discharge from trawl fishing is between 600 and 1,500 million tonnes annually. Not automatically good fish Fredrik Myhre of WWF Verdas naturfond applauds that Debio will shine a spotlight on sustainable fishing. He highlights two things in particular that look positive about the labeling system: That Debio guarantees 100 percent correct product tracking by being MSC certified That they are an actor that will contribute to the debate about making the right choices when it comes to environmentally sound seafood for Norwegian consumers, especially when it comes to the current use of bottom trawls. – What MSC and Debio then guarantee, at least, is that you can trust that there is one hundred percent correct traceability of the product. Debio also deals with important environmental challenges in bottom trawling, says Myhre. Fredrik Myhre is head of the ocean team at WWF Verdas naturfond. Photo: WWF Verdens naturfond This means that the consumer can follow the product from the fishing boat on which the fish is caught and all the way to the plate that the consumer is sitting with in front of him. – But we cannot say that all Debio certification is a thumbs up automatically as of today, he says. He elaborates that several MSC-certified fisheries also have challenges linked to bycatch and management mechanisms. Therefore, he would recommend the consumer to go to WWF’s seafood guide, which has been developed to help the consumer in a jungle of labeling schemes. There, they can choose species with the green light with a clear conscience, according to Myhre. – Why should the consumer trust exactly your guide? – It is because we have extensive work that looks at a number of criteria for the various fisheries. Both when it concerns the condition of the species being fished for, but also what impact the fishery has in terms of bycatch and challenges around other environmental impacts. One of the seafood companies that qualifies for the certification is Gunnar Klo in Myre in Nordland. Among other things, they cannot deliver fish caught with trawls. – It is a certification that documents that we have sustainable fisheries. We believe this is an advantage for the industry and provides security for customers, says daily manager Arne Karlsen. Day-to-day managers in the seafood company Gunnar Klo, Arne Karlsen. Photo: Hege Abrahamsen / Bris Studio AS – We have historically been approved by Krav i Sverige, which is the sister organization of Debio. They are the ones who have certified us in recent years, and it was natural for us to also get our products Debio-approved when we had a customer who also wanted it. I think the labeling will strengthen the purchasing power Johan Frøstrup, day-to-day manager of Debio, is concerned that the branding scheme should be a tool for both companies and consumers so that they can make independent choices. – A lot of Norwegian seafood is transported around the world before it ends up in Norwegian shops again, he says. – Many actors label themselves as sustainable. Why should consumers trust Debio in particular? – Debio is a non-profit membership association and is known for its competence and trustworthiness, as a leading certification body in ecology and sustainability. Debio has also delegated supervisory authority on behalf of the Norwegian Food Safety Authority for organic farming in Norway and works actively with the assurance of other private eco-label schemes, says Frøstrup. – One of your demands here is that the fish must be caught in Norway. But not all Norwegian fishing is good or sustainable fishing. Does Debio have thoughts on that? – One of the requirements is that the fish must not be bottom trawled and it is the fishing method that has the biggest climate footprint and environmental impact, both per kilogram of fish but also by scraping the seabed. – By excluding that part of the fleet, it will also strengthen the capacity of the fishery. It is in line with what the government has also been thinking about, strengthening the coastal fleet, says Frøstrup.
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New environmental label from Debio will make it easier to choose sustainable fish – news Nordland
