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Safeway Announces Sustainable Tuna-Sourcing Policy
"Safeway’s announcement means that 4.5 million cans of tuna will now be sourced sustainably, enough to form a tower of tuna cans 92 miles high."
- Greenpeace
Safeway recently announced that the Safeway brand Skipjack (chunk-light) canned tuna will be responsibly caught using free-school purse-seine methods. This method of using purse-seiners spots tuna schools by using radar and sonar. The company will transition to this method by the end of the year.
The tuna fishing industry is addressing the negative ecosystem impacts of their practices and Safeway’s announcement comes at a time when consumer demand for sustainably caught seafood is at a high. The purse-seine netted fishing practices uses fish aggregating devices (FADs). FADs are used to attract deep-sea fish like tuna and they usually consist of buoys or floats tethered to the ocean floor with concrete blocks. Over 300 species like turtles, sharks and other species of fish including juveniles gather around FADs which means this method of fishing greatly increases by-catch.