BRAKES FISH AND SEAFOOD SOURCING POLICY

Overfishing presents a huge global challenge. Unsustainable fishing practices are leading to the depletion of many fish stocks, which threatens the livelihoods of those in the fishing industry, the future of our fish and seafood supplies, and our marine ecosystems.

Choosing to source sustainable fish and seafood allows us as a business to help reverse this trend, to know that we are contributing to the solution, not the problem, and to support sustainable fishing.

Fish and seafood can be a healthy menu choice, and we acknowledge that to continue to serve the variety of fish and seafood that we enjoy today we must have a robust policy to ensure we serve fish that is demonstrably sustainable.

We are proud to be signatories of the Sustainable Fish City pledge, as part of which we have adopted the following policy for our general sale range to ensure that we only serve our own brand fish and seafood which is demonstrated to be sustainable:

Avoid the Worst:

• As of 14th May 2015 we have stopped sourcing all fish and seafood which is red rated by the Marine Conservation Society (rated a 5) for our general sale, own brand range. These are considered to be unsustainable, overfished, highly vulnerable or from poorly-managed fisheries or farming systems.
• We do not sell any general sale, own brand fish and seafood for which we cannot be certain of its origin – we require evidence from our supplier of the farm or fishery all products are sourced from. We conduct random traceability audits on a sample of products annually.

Promote the Best:

• We will increase our range of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified fish and seafood.
• We will increase our range of fish and seafood on the menu rated ‘Fish to Eat’ (rated 1 or 2) by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).
• To help our customers make the best choices, all sales colleagues are trained to give advice on sustainable fish and seafood.
• We provide customers with the MCS ratings for all products rated 1-3 via ‘The List Online’; Brakes web-based product database. All MSC-certified products are also clearly labelled.

Improve the Rest:

• We have changed the sourcing of all our general sale, own brand products rated ‘4’ by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) to those rated ‘3’ or above.
• For the remaining unrated products we either:

1. Encourage customers to switch to a source which is rated, with a Marine Conservation Society (MCS) rating of 1-3.
2. Work with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) to create a rating for the species; thus investing in conservation knowledge.

Keeping up to date:

Because the status of fish stocks is constantly being monitored, we work closely with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), checking the status of our products against their ratings every six months. If the ratings of our products do change, we will:

1. Update the ratings on our electronic material (including the Brakes website) within 1 month, and our printed materials on any future publications (the website should therefore always be considered the most up to date and definitive source of sustainability information).
2. Should the ratings of any of our products drop to be considered ‘Fish to Avoid’ we will adjust our sourcing as soon as possible, and always within one year.

Further notes:

Scope - The above policy relates to all products that are our own brand and on general sale in the Brakes business. It does not cover other brands, products nominated by customers or products sold by subsidiary businesses. Stock – due to the global nature of fish and seafood, the effect of a change in sourcing policy can take time to work through the supply chain. The advice of our partners Sustain, Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is that old stock should not be wasted so please bear with us whilst we clear stock through of lines where we have improved our sourcing policy.