News: McDonald's Now Serves Sustainable Fish Only

McDonald's commits to serving sustainably-source fish at all of their U.S. restaurants and gets a nice label to show for it. They are now the first national restaurant chain to adopt the Marine Stewardship Council's (MSC) blue ecolabel on their fish packaging. The ecolabel denotes that all fish served at McDonald's restaurants comes from MSC-certified fisheries.

It's not the first time McDonald's has been allowed the label: since 2011, McDonald's restaurants in Europe have been certified to sport the blue mark.

While the only fish you'll find at McDonald's comes in the Filet-O-Fish, that is slated to change in February with the launch of Fish McBites (like Chicken McBites but made with wild-caught, sustainable Alaskan pollock). Promotional material for the new menu item will include mention of the certification.

Besides the environmental kudos, the move makes sense from a business standpoint for McDonald's who have faced fish supplies problems in the past; having to switch from cod to pollock to hoki and now back to pollock again. Of course, if fish populations continue to decline, you'd eventually have to say goodbye to the Filet-O-Fish.

MSC-certified fisheries have been assessed by independent scientists based on three main factors: the health of the fish stock, the impact of the fishery on the ecosystem, and the management system that oversees the fishery.