Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Programme - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 358

For both capture fisheries and aquaculture operations, each criterion includes:
primary factors to evaluate and rank;
secondary factors to evaluate and rank;
evaluation guidelines to synthesise these factors; and
a resulting rank for that criterion.
The ranks for each criterion are summarised in a table and a resulting overall seafood
recommendation is determined based on a set of additional evaluation guidelines
(Plate 17.7). For capture fisheries
A seafood product is ranked as a 'best choice' if three or more criteria are of
low conservation concern (green) and the remaining criteria are not of high
(red) or critical conservation concern (black).
A seafood product is ranked as a 'good alternative' if the five criteria 'aver-
age' to yellow (Moderate Conservation Concern) or if the 'status of stocks'
and 'management effectiveness' criteria are both of moderate conservation
concern.
A seafood product is ranked as 'avoid' if two or more criteria are of high con-
servation concern (red) or if one or more criteria are of critical conservation
concern (black).
The criterion ranks and the overall seafood recommendation are colour-coded to
correspond to the categories of the Seafood Watch pocket guide as follows:
Best choices/green : Consumers are strongly encouraged to purchase seafood in
this category. The wild-caught species is sustainable as defined by Seafood
Watch.
Good alternatives/yellow : Consumers are encouraged to purchase seafood in
this category, as they are better choices than the seafood in the 'avoid'
category. However there are some concerns with how this species and thus
it does not demonstrate all of the qualities of a sustainable fishery as defined
by Seafood Watch.
Avoid/red : Consumers are encouraged to avoid seafood in this category, at least
for now, as they do not demonstrate enough qualities to be defined as sus-
tainable by Seafood Watch.
17.7.2 Other information accompanying our seafood
recommendations
In 2004, Seafood Watch introduced a red asterisk onto the pocket guides placed
beside those seafood items that carried a mercury advisory issued by the United
States Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Advisories are public notices issued by the US federal government to warn con-
sumers of potential health risks associated with specific foods or environmental