The Marine Stewardship Council and Developing Countries - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 288

bycatch of dolphin in tuna fishing (Bonanno & Constance 1996) and of turtles in
shrimp fishing - neither of these were certified by third parties. In both cases, the
main issue was not one of overfishing and overcapacity, but one of animal rights
and the protection of endangered species (Allison 2001).
In this chapter, the role of ecolabelling systems in developing countries is con-
sidered, with specific reference to the MSC's programme. The general features are
highlighted, followed by an elaboration of early criticism of MSC. Then, two of the
main problematic issues that MSC is facing are examined: the impact of the initia-
tive on the 'actual' sustainability of certified fisheries and the applicability of the
MSC standard and procedures in developing countries, especially in small-scale,
data-deficient fisheries. Following this, the process of certification of the hake trawl
industry in South Africa and its intended and unintended outcomes are discussed
based on fieldwork carried out in South Africa in 2004 and 2005 (Ponte 2006).
Finally, the chapter concludes by arguing that special flexibilities and systems of
compliance with standards are necessary to cater for the needs of developing coun-
tries and small-scale, data-deficient fisheries. Transparency, technical assistance
and capacity building alone are not sufficient.

14.2 The Marine Stewardship Council initiative

14.2.1 General features
The MSC is the main global third-party certified ecolabel programme that covers
wild-catch fisheries. It was established in 1996 as a joint initiative of the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the world's largest private non-profit conservation
organisation, and Unilever, at the time the world's largest frozen fish buyer and
processor. Unilever operates its own internal evaluation system on sustainable fish-
eries, but also actively promotes MSC certification among its suppliers. At the MSC
launch, Unilever committed to buy fish only from sustainable sources by the year
2005. The MSC became an independent initiative in 1999. The idea behind MSC
is to address worldwide decline in fish stocks by awarding sustainably managed
fisheries with a certification and a label that can be affixed to retail products (see
Chapter 4).
MSC certification partly depends on a chain-of-custody system that keeps 'sus-
tainable' and 'other' fish separate from each other from the point-of-catch to
the supermarket shelf or ice display. The MSC allows, via its logo, consumers
to promote sustainable fishing through a market-based (rather than regulation-
based) mechanism by choosing the labelled product in preference to the unlabelled
product (Johnston et al . 2001, Roheim 2003, Jaffry et al . 2004). Certification is
granted against a specific MSC standard - 'Principles and Criteria for Sustainable
Fishing'. Submission to an MSC assessment is voluntary, and assessment is car-
ried out by an MSC-accredited third-party certification body. The MSC standard