One year after the launch of The Snapshot: Industry Benchmark on Decapod Crustacean Welfare, the scores of major UK retailers and seafood companies have finally been revealed.
During a live online event on Wednesday 17 January, The Snapshot 2023 report was released – featuring rankings and tiers that illustrate how supermarket chains, seafood processors and producers have performed on decapod crustacean welfare.
Scores from the first Snapshot report were anonymous to give companies more time to formalise and publish their decapod welfare policies. Now, in the 2023 report, consumers can find out which companies are taking action to raise decapod welfare standards and which are lagging behind.
During the launch event, we outlined the report’s key findings and revealed the company rankings. Roughly a third of the attendees at the launch webinar were representatives of benchmark companies, with seafood trade organisations, NGOs, government officials, academics and other seafood companies making up the rest of the audience. The presentation received good feedback, with lots of questions and we encourage everyone to download the report to see exactly how your favourite supermarket or seafood brand fared.
Key findings
Among the key findings is the fact that clear leaders are emerging among supermarkets and seafood processors. Marks & Spencer (M&S) leads the table with 90%, having demonstrated a commitment to eliminating inhumane practices such as eyestalk ablation for prawns and claw nicking for crabs. The retailer already electrically stuns 100% of its brown crab prior to kill and in its extensive new decapod welfare sourcing policy, M&S pledges to extend the use of electrical stunning to all its lobster and warm water prawn supply over the next two years.
In second place was Waitrose (71%), followed by household name brand Young’s Seafood (64%) and two influential processors, Macduff Shellfish (48%) and Hilton Food Group (53%). No other supermarkets achieved over 50% - scores ranged from Tesco (42%) to Aldi, Asda and Ocado who all scored 6%.
The disparity between scores illustrates another key finding of The Snapshot 2023 report: despite the progress seen among some leading companies, most seafood businesses are not taking meaningful action on decapod welfare. More than half of the companies scored less than 20%.
What’s next
So, what do we hope to see in the next Snapshot report? Welfare leaders continuing to take and make opportunities to push decapod welfare standards ever higher, while inspiring lower scoring companies to catch up with their competitors.
The UK seafood industry can choose to lead the world on decapod welfare. Consumers can help by voting with their shopping baskets and showing that only products from companies who care about decapod welfare will make it to the checkout.