For the first time, a hotel chain in Scandinavia has become MSC certified. Japanese spa and conference hotel Yasuragi, flagship of the Nordic Choice chain, is the first in the region to serve MSC labelled seafood.
The hotel in Boo, Stockholm County, is committed to sustainable practices and by featuring the MSC ecolabel on the menu, it's giving guests a chance to contribute to responsible fishing. As well as MSC certified wild capture seafood, the hotel’s menus will now feature responsibly farmed fish bearing the Aquaculture Stewarship Council (ASC) ecolabel.
“If we want to be able to serve fish in the future, the fishing industry, suppliers and consumers all have to take responsibility. This is a way to maintain sustainable fisheries and a step in the right direction”, says Daniel Pettersson, Food and Beverage Manager at Yasuragi.
Guests will now be able to immediately see on the menu if the fish they order is fished or farmed sustainably.
“The labels offer us an easy way to show our guests that we know where the fish we serve comes from and that it has been caught or farmed with consideration of the environment. The fact that the MSC and ASC labels are common in supermarkets freezer counters of course makes our communication easier - many guests know what they stand for”, says Caroline Strindmar, Sustainability Manager at Yasuragi.
"We are pleased that Nordic Choice has the ambition to certify its restaurants, and we congratulate Yasuragi for being the first. More and more people are becoming environmentally conscious and want to be able to choose food produced with the environment in mind. Now we hope that more restaurants follow so guests can choose sustainably caught fish from the menu”, says Christoph Mathiesen, Program Director for MSC in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region.
To date, 265 fisheries have achieved certification to the MSC Fisheries Standard for sustainable fishing. Worldwide, there are over 28,000 seafood products with the MSC ecolabel, all which can be traced back to an MSC certified fishery. In Sweden there are over 1,000 MSC labelled products in supermarkets and there are both restaurant chains and individual restaurants certified to the MSC's Chain of Custody Standard for traceability, which enables them to feature MSC certified products on the menu.