Nottingham University (c) MSC / C Terry
University of Nottingham feeds students’ brains with sustainable fish
Sep 28, 2012
The University of Nottingham has added Marine Stewardship Council certification to its accolades, allowing it to serve MSC certified sustainable fish to over 32,000 students. The University follows Nottingham’s city and district primary schools which became MSC certified in July 2011.
Leading by Example
Starting this week, each of the University’s 14 restaurants will be serving MSC certified fish to all students, staff members and guests, adding to the 50,000 primary school pupils across Nottinghamshire tucking into MSC certified lunches each week.
This means that Nottingham is serving up sustainable fish at almost all of its educational establishments.
Ruth Westcott, UK Commercial Officer for the MSC says: “This is fantastic news that the University of Nottingham will be serving MSC certified fish in all its outlets. The University has always worked hard to make sure it serves the best eco-friendly produce, allowing them to qualify for Soil Association’s Food for Life Bronze Catering Mark. Now they have included certified sustainable fish into their portfolio, which means that alongside all the certified primary schools in the area some 82,000 students have daily access to sustainable fish. An exceptional achievement for the city.”
Ongoing dedication
“Here at the University of Nottingham we strive to uphold our sustainable food policy,” Karen Knight, Commercial Business Manager at the University of Nottingham added. “In particular, our on-going dedication to sourcing fish sustainably has led us to seek MSC certification to serve certified sustainable fish, something we are honoured to accept.”
Available in Nottingham supermarkets
If you aren’t a regular visitor to the University, you can still buy MSC certified fish and seafood in all of the city’s major supermarkets. Just look for the blue ‘Certified Sustainable Seafood’ label.
About the certification
MSC certification means that the fish the University is serving can be traced all the way back to the boats that caught it – quite an achievement for a city that is over 60 miles from the sea. MSC traceability is backed up with random DNA testing and tracebacks.
As a result, the traceability ensures that the product you are buying is from a sustainable and well-managed fishery that receives recognition for its efforts. This creates an incentive for other fisheries to enter MSC assessment and, where needed, make changes to the way they fish in order to get MSC certified.
To get MSC Chain of Custody (CoC) certification, the University had to pass an independent audit and will undergo annual surveillance audits to demonstrate it continues to meet the standard.
More Information
For media inquiries, please contact media@msc.org
