All frozen and fresh fish products from Lidl Belgium will carry an MSC or ASC quality assured mark from this month onwards.
The discounter said that, as a result, all of the fish stocked in its Belgium stores have been sourced and cultivated sustainably.
According to Wouter Dieleman of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), this means that Lidl's unprocessed frozen and fresh fish supply is sustainably certified, sending “a very strong signal" to the entire sector.
"By buying fish with these quality marks, as a consumer you know for sure that the fish comes from sustainable fishing or a responsible nursery. The labels ensure full transparency, whereby the products are always traceable to a sustainable origin,” he said.
“For us, the supermarket is the best channel in making the consumer aware of sustainable fishing. Lidl is, for the time being, the only supermarket chain in Belgium of which all unprocessed fresh fish and frozen fish are certified."
Sustainable Fishing
Lidl revealed that fish is becoming increasingly popular in the country, consuming on average 23.7 kilograms of fish and crustaceans a year, according to an FAO fisheries report from the United Nations.
This, in turn, has resulted in challenges arising in the fishing industry, such as overfishing, pollution, by-catch and harmful fishing techniques.
In order to tackle this issue, there has been an increase in farmed fish being introduced into the market, and as of 2016, more fish was farmed globally than caught - accounting for approximately 80 million tonnes, one million tonnes more than caught fish.
"Somewhere there is an awareness, but we still give priority to other criteria when buying fish. By offering only sustainable fish, the stress for consumers in choosing good fish disappears. This means customers no longer have to think about sustainable or unsustainable fish,” Philippe Weiler, head of sustainability at Lidl, said.
“Lidl offers a sophisticated range as a discount store and consciously opts to make everything within one product group 100% sustainable. […] With MSC and ASC, we choose to limit ourselves to two international and external labels as a rating system. That way there is no confusion for the customer."
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Aidan O'Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
