Year reviews… either you love them or you hate them, but there’s no way around them come mid-December. Joanna Jones, marine lover and intern at the MSC, looks at the past twelve months and picks her top five MSC moments.
Credible ecolabels create consumer trust
Camiel Derichs, Regional Director of Europe at the MSC, on why setting minimum requirements for seafood ecolabels is a good idea.
Recent independent market research shows that globally 63% of seafood consumers look for ecolabels for a trusted source of information. The MSC has earned this trust. Since our formation in 1997, we have developed the world’s most recognised certification and ecolabelling program for sustainable wild-caught seafood.
How DNA testing works
James Simpson breaks down the science behind the MSC's DNA testing program.
When you look at a piece of meat, or a piece of fish, it’s often difficult to tell what species it is. Turn it into a pie or a fish cake and the difficult becomes the impossible. That’s where DNA testing helps. With a sample half a centimetre wide dropped into a little tube of preservative, you can find out if your fish is what the packet says, or if it is something else. It’s not even very expensive.
Tackling seafood fraud
Product Integrity Manager, Alison Roel, explains how DNA testing helps avoid seafood fraud.
Food fraud, simply put, is the selling of food products with a misleading label, description or promise.
Throughout history, dubious traders have looked to profit from substandard, less desirable or counterfeit products. From chalk in flour to horsemeat sold as beef – food fraud is as old as industrial food production itself. Tricks of the trade have included colouring vegetables with copper[i]; diluting milk with water[ii]; substituting herbs for other plants[iii]; and bulking up lamb curries with beef or chicken[iv].
MSC inside story: Why you can trust MSC ecolabelled seafood
These days people are increasingly concerned about where their food comes from. DNA testing prove MSC labelled products come from a certified sustainable fishery.
Alison Roel is a product integrity manager in the MSC’s Standards team. She has been instrumental in the coordination of DNA testing on MSC labelled products. In late 2013, Alison appeared in an episode of the National Geographic Wild documentary series Mission: Save the Ocean discussing her work. Here she talks about her experience and why traceability is important.
