Fishing Policy

Seafood is a globally significant commodity, providing nutritional, social and economic benefits to many communities.

However, the marine eco-system is incredibly fragile so while fishing and farming will always have some impact on the marine environment we aim to source seafood which is caught or farmed using methods which are the least detrimental.

We have a comprehensive, well-established sourcing programme in place and work closely with our suppliers and a range of NGOs to ensure care is taken of sensitive environmental and social issues. We also support a range of formal Fishery Improvement Projects, which help fisheries work towards third party certification demonstrating their sustainable practices. 

The selection criteria for the seafood we sell include: stock levels, fishery management practices, location and method of catch. Species sourced from aquaculture must be certified at farm, hatchery, feed mill and processing stage by a Morrisons approved third party scheme.

We are transparent about where we source from - Since 2015 we've published details of all of the wild capture species sold, including fisheries, catch methods, problems identified and improvement programmes we are supporting, in collaboration with our suppliers, as part of our commitment to the Ocean Disclosure Project.

We support sourcing of UK caught and landed seafood from Responsible Fishing Scheme (RFS) certified vessels and are working to establish the use of third party vessel standards in our international supply chains as well. We operate additional requirements for specific species such as Tuna used in our own brand products. This must be caught by pole and line or fishing methods that do not use Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs).

We want customers to be able to make informed choices about the fish they buy, and have led the market by labelling our fresh fish with information on where and how it was caught.