IntraFish says retailers seem to be reacting, rather than initiating action, to improve their seafood sustainability practices. And its that decision to follow rather than lead that has supermarket chains having to explain themselves in the wake of Greenpeace’s rankings on how sustainable their seafood procurement practices are.

Gotta disagreeretailers are reacting to THREATSfrom Greenpeaceto adopt its sustainability practices or pay the public relations price. That doesnt mean retailers arent working on their own and simply ignoring Greenpeace.

Furthermore IntraFish writes that some stores only addressed the issue, through innocuous press statements that said little beyond the stores support for sustainability. Who says stores should be required to say anything at all when confronted by an extremist environmental group that is likely to later show up at their door as part of a campaign of violence and vandalism?

Why arent retailers taking full page adsout in theWashington Post proclaiming their progress on sustainability? Why arent they racing to embrace Greenpeaces report with cries of we’ll do better, we’ll do better? Why? Because Greeneapece is a marginalized eco-activist group that has chosen confrontation over cooperation for decades. Its a shadow of the tradition founded by the once-proud rainbow warriors who chased illegal whaling into extinction. The Greenpeace you see today confronting and harassing retailers doesnt deserve their attention.

A quick review of the list of stores shows that some that did engage Greenpeace during the survey process actually did worse on the rankings than ones that ignored them.

The rankings are flawed, the report is flawed, and logic that suggests retailers should have been preemptively, publicly explaining themselves to the likes of Greenpeace is flawed.