The Sustainability Consortium Introduces Seafood Sustainability Principles
In October 2013, The Sustainability Consortium® held a workshop at the Member Summit in Atlanta, Georgia. The focus of the workshop was to launch the development of seafood sustainability program principles and discuss how to incorporate them into TSC® Product Sustainability Toolkits™ for seafood. The project, which ran from October through January of 2014, resulted in principles to be used by TSC and the supply chain to evaluate how seafood sustainability programs are managed and developed.
Through the process the group identified a number of intended applications for the principles. First, in order for TSC to recommend programs within the Sustainability Measurement and Reporting System, research associates and working group participants need consistent and transparent guidance for evaluating if a program has been developed and managed in a credible way. The second intended application is to provide guidance for TSC members using the Sustainability Measurement and Reporting System to develop their own policies about whether a sustainability program is managed and has been developed in a credible way. Lastly, the principles will be listed within the Related Information section of TSC Key Performance Indicators and made available on the Food, Beverage, and Agriculture Sector webpage in The Consortium’s website for reference.
“With its vast network of partners, TSC has the ability to quickly and efficiently bring together key stakeholders to drive progress on strategies for addressing sustainability issues across the supply network and this project has been a good example of that. The stakeholders who participated in this work represented civil society organizations, industry, government agencies, and academia and worked together to develop principles that align with the work of TSC while also aligning with existing standards and guidelines used across the industry. TSC members and partners are already implementing the principles to help improve the transparency of how seafood sustainability programs are managed and developed,” said Sarah Lewis, Managing Director of Research and Integration, The Sustainability Consortium.
A full background of this initiative, the principles, and information related to the intended use of the principles can be found here.
