Time to change your tuna?

Greenpeace are telling us to buy Sainsbury's canned tuna and avoid John West. But is it that simple?

A floating tuna transport tank in the Mediterranean. Photograph: Gavin Newman/AFP/Getty

One less headache at the supermarket. Greenpeace, God bless them, would appear to have made the tricky business of selecting your canned tuna a lot simpler: don't buy John West, do buy from Sainsbury's (the full league table is below). Don't necessarily trust the "dolphin friendly" label, which is more complex than it appears. If you really want to keep the turtles and dolphins (and sharks, and other bycatch) safe then "pole and line-caught" is the only reliable promise (here's a useful guide to the different fishing methods). Or you could just buy pollack.

But is it that simple?

There is clearly a good argument not to eat any tuna at all. Regulation and policing of the tuna fisheries is incompetent (Iccat, the international body set up 42 years ago to monitor and preserve the stocks has long been known in the business as the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna). In their defence, controlling the fishing industry is probably impossible: it is clearly determined to keep on trawling into oblivion, as blind to the red lights and alarm bells as Captain Haddock on a bender. Our unstoppable demand for tuna - any tuna - will in the end destroy all the species.

Because many kinds of tuna are similar, fishermen have no trouble passing off the seriously endangered (like bluefin and bigeye) as other species, and thus getting round quota regulations. Bluefin, the source of the most prized sashimi, is the world's most expensive fish. It is also the most endangered animal on the planet that is still killed legally and commercially.

Using the term "dolphin friendly", a familiar label since the 90s, is a bit like calling a lorry "child-friendly". It all depends how well the machinery is used. It may merely mean that trawling fleet uses nets with an escape hatch for larger marine animals like dolphins. These may work - but they certainly don't mean 100% "dolphin safe" (though that's the label used in the United States). And the nets still scoop up huge numbers of immature fish and other species which will then be discarded.

The "fish aggregation device" (Fad) buoys that attract tuna and report their presence to fishermen are used a lot in the fishery of supposedly adequately stocked species like skipjack - but they also attract the scarcer big tuna, sharks and other predators, which then die along with the rest of the fish. (There's a comprehensive explanation of Fads here.)

Greenpeace says 1kg of other fish die for every 10kg of tuna produced in netting systems that use Fads, and they are the reason why John West came in for a particular caning. So too did John West's "general approach" and their labelling. The JW website claims "John West tuna is caught with no threat to dolphins". "No threat to dolphins" implies a level of care that no one using the phrase "dolphin friendly" could claim to comply with - "lesser threat to dolphins" would be more honest.

"Dolphin safe" and "dolphin friendly" are terms that still cause rancorous debate between the different environmental organisations. The dolphin friendly movement has succeeded in stopping the old Pacific purse seine netting strategy which used to deliberately net schools of dolphin in order to catch the tuna they were chasing. But there's no method that uses nets that can honestly claim (as the label does in the States) it is utterly "dolphin safe". Line and pole is the only truly safe label - and the only one that doesn't result in wasteful by-catch.

John West, which is the UK's biggest supplier, denies the charges. Their statement at the end of last week says they think Greenpeace has misrepresented them, and that they are seeking an urgent meeting. The company told WoM that its buying practices avoid areas in the Pacific where tuna fishing is likely to harm dolphins. It said too that tuna fishing has been cleared of harming turtles in serious numbers by the California-based NGO Earth Island Institute.

Here's Greenpeace's league table of the suppliers:


All of Sainsbury's tinned tuna is now pole and line caught, making their own-brand the only one that is entirely fished using sustainable methods.


Around 50 per cent of the Co-op's tinned tuna is caught using pole and line.

Marks and Spencer

Good overall seafood procurement policy, but a great deal of their tuna comes from fishing boats that have no restriction on the use of FADs.


Show awareness of the problems, but a great deal of their tuna comes from fishing boats that have no restriction on the use of FADs and the tins fail to say how the fish was caught. Have expressed some support for marine reserves.


Again, some awareness of the problems, a great deal of their tuna comes from fishing boats that have no restriction on the use of FADs and the tins fail to say how the fish was caught.


The majority of Tesco tuna comes from boats that have no restrictions on using FADs, and they fail to tell customers how the fish was caught.


No restrictions on the use of FADs, no support for marine reserves and Princes tins never say how the fish was caught.

John West

Never tells consumers how the tuna was caught, no restrictions on the use of FADs for the majority of their catch, no support for marine reserves and more widespread use of tuna from stocks under specific threat. And the John West general sustainable seafood policy is lacking basic credibility.