Zur Bedeutung des Marine Stewardship Council-Siegels für den Fischgroß- und Einzelhandel

Abstract

With the beginning of industrial fishing fish has become a commodity. Pressing problems such as by-catch, illegal fishing as well as the increasing demand for fish in developing countries contribute to the fact that the world's oceans are increasingly overfished. Therefore, it was initially necessary to develop a globally accepted medium for the regulation of global fish stocks. In the past decade the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label for capture fisheries has assured its position as a dominating label for sustainable fish. Especially in Germany the label has strengthened its position in the food retailing sector. Numerous articles have already focused on the assessment of the environmental and social benefits of the label as well as on the certification scheme. In contrast, this paper analyzes the importance of the Marine Stewardship Council label for the fish wholesale and retail in Germany. In order to evaluate the importance of the label in the fish wholesale and retail twelve interviews were conducted in the fishery sector as well as one interview with the Marine Stewardship Council. The outcome of the study indicates that the MSC label is to a large extent seen as a marketing instrument for the wholesale and food retailing. The use of the label is described as heavily involuntary in cause of pressures in the value chain. Furthermore, especially smaller and specialized fish shops have only little, or no benefits at all, after a MSC certification. Therefore, the MSC has so far not been able to convince the retail sector of its labels benefits. In fact it has failed to outline that its certification system can be implemented as well in the retail as in the wholesale sector. Thus, the reputation of the MSC label in the retail sector is very low. The MSC has so far done little to simplify the certification for smaller and specialized fish shops. One reason for this is the subordinate importance of these shops for the overall significance of the MSC. The specialized shops only account for five percent of the German fish sales. Overall, the MSC label is seen as the correct approach to regulate the global fish stocks and implement a sustainable development, which is however implemented incorrectly. The MSC certification is considered as generally difficult to comprehend, too expensive and above all too labor intensive. Besides, the overall authority to act for a sustainable development is seen mainly in the fishery policy of the European Union and not in the MSC organization.