Which supermarkets fare well on seafood sustainability

Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer jointly lead the way as the supermarkets with the most credentials for selling sustainable seafood, a new report by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has found, with the Co-op coming a close second, and Waitrose third.

Morrisons was fourth, Iceland fifth and and the northern chain Booths came sixth in the survey, which assesses retailers’ seafood policies, own brand sources and labelling, as well as other indicators of how seriously supermarkets take sustainability.

However, Tesco, who has the highest market share of seafood in the UK, declined to take part, citing that this year the report wouldn't duly recognise improvements that had been made and the work being done in this area. Aldi also chose not to take the survey, while Asda, Lidl, Spar and Budgen didn't respond to requests to be involved.

Sam Stone, fisheries officer for MCS, said: "This survey is one of several ways in which MCS tries to inform consumers about the environmental issues associated with the capture and production of seafood. Unfortunately, because they [Tesco] didn’t participate, we simply don’t know how they perform across the various categories assessed in the supermarket survey. This is disappointing."

A Tesco spokesperson responded by saying that Tesco: “chose not to take part in this survey because we don’t agree with the methodology, but this doesn’t detract from the important work we’ve been doing on seafood sustainability with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership to develop an industry leading system for evaluating the sustainability of all our fisheries.”

The charity stated that although most participating supermarkets have shown improvement - with higher proportions of seafood rated as three or above by MCS, or seafood certified to recognised standards being sold - without trust, transparency and traceability there's no consumer faith. It praised M&S, who performed well in almost all categories, and Sainsbury's, who have the second largest market share after Tesco.

But Stone warned that as seafood has an even longer supply chain than meat - with some fish caught in UK waters sent halfway across the world to be processed and then transported back here and sold - the industry must be careful that it doesn't face its own "horsemeat scandal".

A Pocket Good Fish Guide featuring a summary of the Fish to Eat and Fish to Avoid lists is available from www.mcsuk.org or download the smartphone app from the website.

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