The poll, entitled 'Can certified sustainable seafood originate from fisheries targeting overexploited or depleted stocks?', aims to establish which standards certification schemes should use.

According to Friend of the Sea, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) 'Guidelines for the Ecolabelling of fish and fishery products from marine capture fisheries' indicate among the "minimum substantive requirements and criteria for ecolabels" (art.30) that the "stock under consideration is not overfished [...]".

Friend of the Sea says its criteria requires categorically that in order for a product to be ecolabelled as sustainable it must originate from a stock which is not overexploited according to the updated information from FAO, regional fishery bodies or national marine research Institutes. For this reason Friend of the Sea has not certified products from overexploited fisheries.

However, it claims other schemes have certified fisheries which "insist on overexploited or even depleted stocks".

"In certain cases these fisheries have been recertified after some years even though the stocks were still depleted and their status was worse than at time of certification," Friend of the Sea said in a statement.

"Is it correct for consumers and helpful for ocean conservation to label seafood products as ‘sustainable’, even though they originate from stocks which are overexploited or depleted?"

To vote in the poll go to www.friendofthesea.org and click on the poll link on the top of the menu on the left. Or go directly to: http://www.friendofthesea.org/mod/poll/index.php

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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