The seafood products we assess
Small-scale fisheries and farming operations are important parts of coastal communities.
They produce seafood that consumers can find fresh in their local retail outlets, cafes and restaurants.
These businesses typically support local employment and social enterprise and can add significantly to tourism, social cohesion and identity.
Although we are fully independent of these businesses and their communities, we enable the involvement of seafood producers during their product’s assessment.
We regard seafood to include all aquatic ‘blue’ foods that are caught or farmed in marine and freshwater ecosystems. Yes, our assessments include products from river-based fisheries and land-based aquaculture and not just the ‘sea’.
Our assessment process identifies whether wild-catch and farmed seafood products are achieving a minimum standard of ecological sustainability. Those that do are being sourced within the natural limits of marine and freshwater environments and are having minimal impact on habitats.
In our assessment process, a seafood product is determined as the species, the fishery’s location and how the species is harvested or farmed. For example, rather than assessing the catch of snapper across Australia, we might assess one fisher of snapper in a particular location. Another example would be focusing on one oyster farmer in an estuary instead of all farmed oyster operations across a state or territory.
There are regional and national differences in the way wild-catch and farmed seafood products are produced across Australia. These differences can include stock issues, business models and whether the species is caught (or farmed) in a sustainable manner. A species that is produced sustainably in one location might not be sustainably produced elsewhere.
We deal with these differences by focusing on local seafood products in our assessments.