© Metro AG
One of the world's leading wholesale food retailers with over 700 stores and depots across 21 countries, Metro AG, has been praised for its newly enhanced animal welfare requirements for seafood sourced across its global supply chain. The group’s updated Animal Health and Welfare Position statement, released recently on the company’s website, adds a new requirement that all fish and crustaceans sourced for Metro’s own-brand seafood products must be humanely stunned via mechanical or electrical stunning before slaughter.
The updated policy applies to all Metro AG stores globally, including both its Metro and Makro brands, which span western Europe, eastern Europe and Asia. The new policy improvements, which also include asking the company’s shrimp suppliers (both own-brand and branded) to avoid eyestalk ablation, are expected to benefit tens of millions of fish and hundreds of millions of crustaceans annually.
“We recognise animals as sentient beings and strive to increase quality of life for animals by balancing mental and physical well-being as well as natural behaviour, wherever reasonable,” Metro AG noted in its updated Animal Health and Welfare Position statement. “For own-brand products...we aim to ensure 100 percent humane stunning prior to slaughtering in order to minimise anxiety, pain and suffering and the distress experienced by animals...This provision also applies to all fish and crustacean products, for which only mechanical or electrical stunning are approved as stunning methods.”
Lever Foundation, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), has worked with the company on its new policy.
"We commend Metro AG for strengthening its animal welfare standards to improve the welfare of fish and crustaceans at slaughter," said Astrid Duque, sustainability programme director at Lever Foundation, in a press release. "Metro AG’s new requirement for humane stunning represents significant progress in reducing the suffering of hundreds of millions of aquatic animals annually and sets a strong benchmark for other food retailers to follow."
Currently, many fish and crustaceans in the global food supply chain are slaughtered without stunning by being cut open alive or being left to suffocate in open air or in ice slurries. Over the past year, an increasing number of food companies, from retailers such as Co-op (UK), Sainsbury’s and Costco to restaurant brands such as Espresso House and Pret a Manger, have implemented new policies that improve the welfare of fish and crustaceans in their supply chains.
