Natural and organic foods supermarket chain imposes own standards on farmed fish
Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods supermarket, today announced it has implemented its own standards for all farmed seafood sold at the Company’s 270 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The company’s quality standards already prohibit the use of antibiotics, added growth hormones, preservatives such as sulfites, poultry and mammalian by-products in feed, and genetically modified or cloned seafood. The enhanced aquaculture standards include these additions:
Producers are required to minimize the impacts of fish farming on the environment by protecting sensitive habitats such as mangrove forests and wetlands, monitoring water quality to prevent pollution, and sourcing feed ingredients responsibly.
Producers must provide detailed information on farming practices and pass independent third-party audits.
Farm-to-fork traceability is required from the hatcheries where the young fish and shrimp are first hatched, to the ponds, pens, raceways, or tanks where they are raised and to the plants where they are processed.
Toxic chemicals such as malachite green and organophosphate pesticides are prohibited.
To ensure that fish farmers adhere to Whole Foods Market’s standards for aquaculture, all will be required to successfully pass an independent third-party audit that reviews every detail of the standards.
The farmed seafood at Whole Foods Market include shrimp, tilapia, catfish, trout, salmon and Arctic char.
