Whole Foods Color-Codes Seafood

SN STAFF

AUSTIN, Texas — Whole Foods Market here has announced a partnership with the Blue Ocean Institute and the Monterey Bay Aquarium to launch the first in-store, color-coded sustainability rating system for wild caught seafood.

Green-coded products will represent "best-choice" ratings — species that are relatively abundant and caught in environmentally friendly ways. Yellow coding represents "good alternative" products, where there may be some concerns about the species' status or catch methods, and red coding represents species that are suffering from overfishing, or fishing methods that harm other marine life or habitats.

Whole Foods also marked the new program's rollout by committing to phasing out all "red-rated" species by Earth Day in 2013.

"At the end of the day, it's a team effort," Carrie Brownstein, Whole Foods' seafood quality standards coordinator said in a release. "Our customers, buyers, fishermen, and fishery managers can all make smart decisions that move us in the direction of greater sustainability."