Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday held an impromptu protest outside a Mitsui Taipei Food & Beverage Enterprise Group restaurant in Taipei over what it called the company’s “reluctance to initiate talks” about serving bluefin tuna at its outlets.
Members of the group yesterday morning used a hoist to hang a banner reading “serving endangered species” from the sign on Mitsui’s flagship store in the Zhongshan District (中山).
Citing a ranking published by Greenpeace in January, Greenpeace Taiwan ocean campaigner Hsieh Yi-hsuan (謝易軒) said that the Japanese-style restaurant chain is one of the poorest-performing seafood chains in the nation in terms of its damage to marine ecology, ranking at the bottom along with Sushi Express, the nation’s largest conveyor-belt sushi bar chain.
Photo: Ian Kuo, Taipei Times
Hsieh criticized Mitsui’s procurement policies and the fishing methods of the fishermen it is affiliated with — as well as its data transparency, for example whether customers are informed of where the fish are harvested and in what ways they were caught.
Greenpeace Taiwan has tried to arrange a meeting with Mitsui officials in a bid to persuade the company to adopt more eco-friendly methods, but has only received perfunctory responses, Hsieh said.
A member from Mitsui’s management who attended the protest first denied that the group serves bluefin tuna at its stores, but later admitted that the fish is on offer when Greenpeace Taiwan members cited findings they made posing as customers.
Asked where the bluefin tuna is sourced and if the chain would consider stopping the sale of it, he said only that the bluefin tuna was caught in the Indian Ocean and that the chain would discuss how to improve fishing methods with “the people they work with.”
Of the nine seafood restaurant chains that Greenpeace Taiwan has been in talks with, only Shin-Yeh (欣葉) has promised to stop serving bluefin tuna and provide information transparency, Hsieh said.
The organization would continue its campaign to dissuade restaurants from serving vulnerable marine species, she said.
Greenpeace, the WWF and other environmental groups say bluefin tuna populations in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have dropped significantly in recent decades from overfishing and illegal fishing driven by the demand for tuna for sushi. Bluefin tuna are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
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