Wal-Mart joins environmentalists to maintain oceans
BY MARK MINTON
Posted on: Sunday, December 17, 2006
Not long after a threatened environmental boycott forced Walt Disney Co. to drop shark’s fin soup from menus at its Hong Kong resort, a group of top food executives and environmentalists gathered at a Disney World hotel for a seafood dinner.
Over entrees carefully screened to avoid the kind of environmental blunder that landed Disney in hot water, seafood buyers from Darden Restaurants, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other corporations discussed a mutual interest in healthy oceans with conservationists from the World Wildlife Fund and like-minded groups.
Later, the group toured Epcot Center’s “The Seas with Nemo & Friends.”
The unusual two-day retreat hints at the degree to which Wal-Mart and some other companies, stung by criticism or exercising corporate responsibility, are collaborating with environmental groups to bring environmentally friendly products to market.
On the shuttle back to Orlando International Airport, Peter Redmond, Wal-Mart’s vice president of seafood and deli, told Will Martin, chairman of the Marine Stewardship Council, that he planned to start buying seafood that the council certifies as sustainable — that is, harvested without jeopardizing future catches.
A year later, a total transformation is under way in Wal-Mart’s seafood aisles.
The retailer has pledged that, within five years, all the wild-caught seafood it sells in North American stores will be screened and approved by the Marine Stewardship Council.
The little-known London charity, begun as a collaboration between Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund, offers itself as a market-driven solution to overfishing. It judges seas and endorses those it says are healthy to fish.
Packaging of about a dozen of Wal-Mart’s fish products bears the council’s blue-andwhite seal of approval so far.
The retailer’s seafood initiative is one prong of a “green” movement that ranges from building environmentally friendly Wal-Mart stores to reducing packaging on merchandise. It is drawing praise from some environmentalists and scorn from some conservatives.
No one suggests that Wal-Mart has saved the world’s oceans. But the effort already has produced a nice catch. Among the catfish and salmon fillets, Wal-Mart now stocks New Zealand hoki.
“We hadn’t even heard of it two years ago,” Redmond said in an interview last week. Most consumers have never heard of hoki, either, so Wal-Mart has printed “a mild white fish” on the boxes, not far from the logo assuring consumers that they aren’t buying the last hoki.
ASSURANCE LABELS A series of reports have concluded that overfishing is depleting oceans at alarming rates, including a highly publicized study published last month in the journal Science. It found that, if trends continue, 90 percent of the world’s fish and seafood species will collapse by 2048. Among those who dispute that is the lobbying group for the seafood industry. The National Fisheries Institute contends that government management of the oceans is largely effective and that consumers don’t really need extra assurances from groups such as the Marine Stewardship Council. But Redmond said Wal-Mart’s alignment with the council is rooted in both environmental and business interests.
“I need to have fish five years from now,” he said.
Safeguarding the supply chain is not the only business rationale. The shake-up in seafood comes as Wal-Mart attempts to position itself as a force for positive social change, countering a public-relations onslaught financed by labor unions.
At the same time, Wal-Mart has been courting the upscale consumers who are driving strong growth in sales of environmentally friendly organic goods. Consumer sales of organic foods hit $ 13. 8 billion last year, up from $ 3. 6 billion in 1997, according to the Organic Trade Association.
The Marine Stewardship Council’s logo is only one of a profusion of such labels appearing on store shelves. Some of the labels, which range from “eco-pot
atoes” to fair-trade coffee, attest not only to environmental soundness but also to social responsibility. Some diamonds are certified to ensure they’re not “blood diamonds” financing a distant terror network.
Urvashi Rangan, who tracks eco-labels for Consumers Union, said there are more than 50 for food alone. Not all are credible, she added. Consumers Union, which maintains a database at www. eco-labels. org, finds the Marine Stewardship Council label only “somewhat meaningful.” Rangan said that it is not applied consistently and that it is a conflict for the council to accept funding from Unilever. HELP FROM THE WALTONS
The European food and consumer goods giant is known for brands such as Dove soap and Lipton tea. Fearing that overfishing would ruin its frozenseafoods business, it joined with the World Wildlife Fund to create the council in 1997.
Freed from the corporate fold in 1999, the Marine Stewardship Council is now independent, funded primarily by charitable foundations interested in oceans. The latest: the Walton Family Foundation, overseen by the first family of Wal-Mart.
Until recently, the Walton foundation focused on the Delta region of Arkansas and Mississippi, Northwest Arkansas and education.
It added marine and freshwater conservation this year, spokesman Jay Allen has said. One fledgling initiative seeks market-based solutions to overfishing of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.
On Jan. 1, the foundation will bring on a manager to help steer its environmental giving. Currently the director of marine conservation for the World Wildlife Fund, Scott Burns has been integral in building the Marine Stewardship Council, according to people in the seafood industry and the environmental community. The foundation has also delivered a pair of Waltons onto the boards of environmental groups with a keen interest in sustainable oceans. Wal-Mart Chairman S. Robson Walton is on the board of Conservation International. Sam Walton – Sam R. Walton, grandson of the legendary Mr. Sam – has joined the board of Environmental Defense. Both groups are known for the collaborative approach they take in their dealings with corporations, as is the World Wildlife Fund.
CERTIFYING FISHERIES Wal-Mart is a hefty catch for the Marine Stewardship Council, which only two years ago was laying off a third of its staff, acknowledged Rupert Howes, the chief executive officer. Now the organization, which operates on a budget of about $ 5 million, is about to open a Tokyo office in addition to the ones it keeps in London and Seattle.
Besides winning the backing of the world’s largest retailer, the council has increased its certification efforts. About 6 percent of the world’s edible wild fish now bear the organization’s blue-and-white seal, Howes said.
Third-party consulting firms do the job of reviewing a variety of scientific data and conducting interviews to determine whether the fishery is sustainable. It’s a complex, time-consuming task that Howes said is inherently more difficult than determining the sustainability of, say, a forest. “All the obvious things,” Howes said. “You can kick trees; you can take photos of them; they don’t move.” After the initial certification, the council does annual surveillance checkups. It also certifies a boat-to-store “chain of custody” that Howes said assures consumers that the fish with the logo on the package really did come from a certified fishery. Fisheries come up for recertification every five years. Twenty-two are now certified, from England’s humble Thames River herring fishery to Alaska’s mighty Bering Sea / Aleutian Islands pollock fishery, which accounts for 30 percent of the total tonnage of fish landed in the United States — and 100 percent of the McDonald’s fish sandwiches served in North America.
WAL-MART’S EFFECT In the United States, the grocer that has most actively promoted the council’s certification is Whole Foods Market, the Austin-based seller of organic foods that touts the logos as part of its annual promotion of wild-caught salmon.
Though Wal-Mart’s pledge moves it onto Whole Foods Market’s turf, spokesman Kate Lowery said it welcomes any new commitment to sustainability. But she’s not so sure Wal-Mart will really be able to source 100 percent of its seafood section to certified fisheries. “I don’t see how that would be realistic.”
Some Wal-Mart suppliers worry that, in the attempt, the company will force some of its 15 to 20 wholesalers out of the supply chain, said a person familiar with firms that sell seafood to the retailer. Wal-Mart has enlisted Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund to help suppliers make the transition to certified fisheries.
Redmond said the idea is not to drop fisheries that might be difficult to certify but to push for environmental improvements that will allow them to make the grade.
Beaver Street Fisheries in Jacksonville, Fla., supplies Wal-Mart with its New Zealand hoki, the only certified fish among it current offerings. “We have already booked, and have coming, some additional products, and we hope to expand that line substantially,” sales director Carlos Sanchez said. CONSERVATIVES WATCHFUL
Some environmentalists dismiss the Marine Stewardship Council’s endorsement as unwarranted cover for fishing fleets plundering the oceans.
Some conservatives are watching the Wal-Mart effort with deeper reservations.
In a recent report titled “Wal-Mart Embraces Controversial Causes,” the National Legal and Policy Center said Wal-Mart will only hurt its business in its wrongheaded attempt to appeal to “liberal interest groups.” The center, formed to promote ethics in government, also monitors the actions of the unions and other liberal groups.
“Cowering to activist pressure, Wal-Mart has over the last three years become a strident advocate of environmentalism, affirmative action and homosexual rights,” the group said in its report. It described Wal-Mart’s goal to become a green company as “ominous,” saying it will squeeze out smaller suppliers that can’t afford to meet environmental mandates.
Redmond assured that Wal-Mart will not be emptying its shelves of uncertified king crab in favor of the council-certified Burry Inlet cockles or Loch Torridon nephrops. In fact, he said, the retailer hopes to start adding certified crab this summer.
Prices should not rise, Redmond said — at least not anytime soon. In the long term, he acknowledged, “I’m not sure I can say that.”
After all, Wal-Mart is entering uncharted waters. No other retailer has pledged to have 100 percent of its wild-caught seafood certified as sustainable.
Unilever made a similar pledge as a food manufacturer. In 1996, it announced its goal to be 100 percent certified by the end of 2005. It had reached only 56 percent, said Trevor Gorin, the company spokesman.
In the end, Gorin said, there weren’t enough sustainable fish in the sea.
