‘Our Pledge’: Australia’s seafood industry launches social licence campaign
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBVPnxevuHA[/embedyt]
Seafood Industry Australia (SIA), the national peak-body representing the wild-catch, aquaculture and post-harvest sectors of the Australian seafood industry, will today (Thursday, October 24) launch “Our Pledge”.
“After almost two years in the pipeline, today marks an important milestone with the launch of ‘Our Pledge’,” SIA CEO Jane Lovell said.
“’Our Pledge’ is our commitment to the community, and to each other, that we will do the right thing to ensure a vibrant future for our sector, and keep putting the best Australian seafood on the table now and for generations to come.
“At SIA’s inception our members identified social licence as a top priority and we’ve been working hard to develop an open and honest way to respond to community concerns and secure the future of Australia’s seafood industry since.
“’Our Pledge’ is based on shared values. We asked the community and industry what is important to them and found strong similarities in the answers. We know our community wants to eat, and we want to provide, great Australian seafood confident in the knowledge it is grown and harvested in a sustainable way.
“‘Our Pledge’ recognises shared concerns and provides a way for us, as an industry, to work together to actively communicate and address these critical issues. It also gives us an opportunity to address mistruths and showcase the real stories and actions from within our industry. Ultimately, we want the community to be confident the Australian aquaculture and wild-catch industries are well managed and sustainable, and we care about our environment just as much as they do.
“As we launch today we have more than 120 signatories including: Austral Fisheries, Raptis Seafoods, OceanWatch Australia, Sydney Fish Market and Humpty Doo Barramundi. ‘Our Pledge’ also has the support of associated industries and regulators.
“Over the next few months we will promote ‘Our Pledge’ to industry and encourage sign-up. We are also actively working on developing KPIs and industry stories that will underpin and demonstrate each pledge statement. We are committed to ensuring ‘Our Pledge’ is more than just words and that every one of our statements can be backed up with facts and figures.
“We’ve also undertaken a large community survey to establish baseline community perception. This will allow us to track the impact of ‘Our Pledge’ overtime.
“We’d like to thank the Australian Government for their support in allowing us to collect these metrics through the ‘Our Marine Parks’ grant program.
“‘Our Pledge’ provides industry with a way to succinctly communicate with the community and to inform them of our values and practices. It also helps industry to focus our efforts on meeting community concerns including the establishment of areas where we need more research, or for greater uptake of existing research and the industry standard of best-practice.
“As an industry, we know we need the support of the community to ensure can keep putting the best Australian seafood on your table now and for generations to come.”
Click here to sign “Our Pledge”.
<ENDS>
For more information, images or to schedule an interview with SIA CEO Jane Lovell please contact Seafood Industry Australia media and communications manager Jessica McInerney on:
M: 0420 695 431
