ECO DECEPTION: How to spot greenwashing and mislabelled seafood in SA

As consumers increasingly seek affordable and nutritious protein sources, seafood consumption has increased from 13.9 million South Africans in 2022 to 16.7 million South Africans in 2025. This is according to the Above Board Or Below Deck: Wwf-Sassi Retailer/Supplier Participation Scheme Report 2025 by the World Wild Fund for Nature’s Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (WWF-Sassi).

And as the demand for seafood continues to grow, so does the demand for sustainably sourced and environmentally responsible products, the report says. This has created fertile grounds for greenwashing or the act of misleading consumers about a company’s environmental practices or the environmental benefits of a product or service, according to the report. 

Businesses may use misleading claims as a marketing tool to mislead consumers into believing products are environmentally responsible or sustainable, while charging premium prices based on those claims, the report says.

The report further notes that the seafood sector is particularly vulnerable to greenwashing. This is due to its very complex supply chain, according to Arné Oliver who is the WWF SA Seafood Market Transformation Officer and main author of the report.

Seafood could go through many different places, even different countries at every step of the supply chain, which made it difficult to trace the sustainability of each step, she explained in an interview with Daily Maverick. As an example, information given to retailers may not be accurate and could be based on claims made by a middleman in the supply chain that is difficult to trace and verify, she said.

Greenwashing was very common, because it was easy to label a product as environmentally friendly and assume that the consumer would believe the claim without any verifiable evidence, said WWF-Sassi Outreach and Awareness Manager Kirtanya Maharaj. 

“It’s about trust. Greenwashing breaks that trust between a consumer and a retailer, and trust builds loyalty. So if you, for example, know that your favorite retailer is not doing what they’re preaching, then you're going to start thinking twice about what else they’re not [doing],” Oliver said.

How to spot greenwashing

The report lists six ways consumers can spot greenwashing in the seafood sector, including in seafood products, retailers, suppliers, restaurants and marketing. 

First, greenwashing can involve “fluffy language”, which entails words or terms with no clear meaning, for example “eco-friendly”, the report says. Alternatively, corporations may highlight one small aspect of their operations that might be sustainable while hiding the rest that may not be, the report adds. 

Second, greenwashing can take the form of jargon or information that only a scientist could check or understand. Some jargon that is commonly used in the seafood industry is the term “responsible”, according to Maharaj. Responsibly sourced seafood did not necessarily imply sustainability, she said. For example, fish could be responsibly sourced from a small-scale fisher, but be a species on the red list, making it unsustainable. 

According to Maharaj, WWF-Sassi had compiled a list of seafood that was red, orange and green listed. Green was the best choice, orange was “think twice” and red meant “don’t buy”, she said.  

Third, the report outlines that the seafood sector may employ suggestive imagery and evocative language. It may use green images that indicate an unjustified green impact with phrases that mirror this same idealism, it says.

Suggestive imagery can include images such as a green tick on the packaging to mislead consumers into believing that a product is sustainable, despite there being no evidence for consumers to verify what is being suggested, according to Oliver.

Fourth, products may include a label that looked like a third-party endorsement, but did not actually exist. This could, for example, look like a can of tuna that had a badge, sticker or stamp of approval pasted onto it claiming it was “ocean friendly” and was endorsed by an eco-association or eco-label, but that third party did not necessarily exist, Oliver said. 

Fifth, greenwashing involved using claims that could be neither proven nor disproven as there was simply no evidence for the claim. The seafood sector commonly made sweeping statements, such as implying that seafood that was farmed was sustainable, Maharaj said.

She explained this using an example of prawns. Some prawns were red listed because of the way that they were farmed, thus if a supplier were to imply that these prawns were sustainable, simply because they were farmed, it would be greenwashing. 

Lastly, greenwashing could look like the type of fish being sold being a different species from what was stated on the label or menu, or when the information about its origin, method of capture or production was incorrectly represented.

A common example of seafood mislabeled in South Africa was “salmon trout”, said Oliver. Although it was not an existing species, many retailers or restaurants liked to use this term. Salmon and trout were two completely different species, and if a consumer were to do research they may discover that a restaurant may be serving them trout while charging the high prices often associated with salmon, she said. 

To protect themselves against greenwashing, consumers must be curious about the information given to them, Oliver said. WWF-Sassi prompts consumers to ask questions such as what species the seafood was, where it was from and how it was caught or farmed, so that they could verify the sustainability of a product. 

She added that consumers should verify if a species claimed as a green species was in fact a green species or not. WWF-Sassi recommended consumers verify codes and stamps on products, she said.

Better practices within the seafood sector

The seafood sector could improve its sustainability communication by ensuring that the information it received from its suppliers was accurate and transparent, Oliver said.

A traceability system should be implemented to ensure that members of the supply chain such as retailers knew exactly from which points the seafood had travelled to and from, she added. 

Further, retailers should create a policy that specified the types of seafood they wanted to procure, such as green-listed seafoods and seafood sourced from sustainable fisheries, and this policy should be communicated to their suppliers, Oliver explained.

According to Maharaj, the seafood sector should refrain from marketing its products using sweeping claims, and ensure labels were accurate and only included credible certifications.

WWF-Sassi recommends that everyone in the seafood sector comply with the Approved Market Names for South African and Related Seafood Species (Sans 1647), said Maharaj. 

SANS 1647, developed by WWF SA in collaboration with the South African Bureau of Standards, and former Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture, is a voluntary standard developed to standardise seafood naming, the report explains.

The standard covers fresh, frozen and canned seafood and aims to reduce consumer confusion and misleading marketing across the seafood supply chain, it says. 

Consumer protection

It also supports the sustainable use and management of marine resources and coastal ecosystems and strengthens consumer protection by ensuring seafood products are accurately labelled, giving consumers greater confidence that products match their packaging, and improves awareness of unsustainable or illegal seafood species among consumers, retailers and suppliers.

WWF-Sassi recommended the Sans 1647, because it made sustainability more transparent and made it easier not only for consumers to hold retailers accountable, but for retailers to hold suppliers accountable too, Oliver said. The standard also created an open chain of communication between consumers, retailers and suppliers, she added.

“Sustainability is a journey, and there is no retailer or a supplier that is expected to be 100% sustainable. But there is the expectation to ensure traceability, transparency, credible information, verifiable information, so that the consumer can have information to make their own choices,” Maharaj said. DM