This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Greenpeace has accused John West of making a “plainly false” claim that customers can trace its tuna back to the vessel that caught it.

A tool on John West’s website allows customers to enter the can code and “see exactly where your fish came from”.

But Greenpeace said that despite some products being labelled as “100% traceable” and accompanied by an arrow pointing to the company’s website, the website’s tool provided no way of tracing tuna if it had come from Thailand.

Greenpeace said its investigation found that thousands of John West tuna products in supermarkets across the UK were from Thailand. Customers who enter Thailand as the country of origin are asked to email John West instead.

It said John West had a responsibility to show customers full transparency, especially given international concerns over the Thai fishing industry which included environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

John West accused of breaking tuna pledge to end 'destructive' fishing methods Read more

Greenpeace oceans campaigner Ariana Densham said: “John West promises to tell ‘the story behind every can’ but it’s keeping shtum on its Thai cans, when these are precisely the ones consumers deserve to have the clearest information on.



“When a company like John West puts ‘100% traceable’ on its tins, consumers quite rightly expect to be able to take their word for it.”

John West told The Times it was “amending the website copy to encourage anyone with a can of Thai tuna to email us; we will then be able to provide full traceability details in a response email”. A spokeswoman said that all its tuna was “fully traceable” and the problem was “simply a website limitation”.

Last week Greenpeace accused John West of breaking a promise to consumers by continuing to use “destructive” fishing methods to catch tuna.

The latest league table for tuna sold by supermarkets and companies produced by Greenpeace ranked the firm last because 98% of its tuna was caught using “fish aggregation devices” that kill other marine wildlife including sharks and endangered turtles.