john west

It's with enormous pleasure that I can reveal that Princes has (finally) got the message that bycatch is killing the oceans and has announced that it will clean up its tinned tuna.

Another tin of tuna, because we know you can't get enough of these pictures

The old saying about a can of worms, is based on the idea that once you open said can, it's impossible to get the worms back in and close it again. Who knew that was true of cans of tuna too?

But fresh from our update on some of the international branded laggards yesterday, comes some news of more developments from some of the UK retailers.

It’s nearly Christmas …. And as I write this it's even snowing outside the Greenpeace office, so maybe it’s time for a little goodwill and some good news.

Way back in 2008 we published a league table ranking the major tinned tuna suppliers in the UK on a number of environmental criteria. Back then big brands John West and Princes were languishing at the bottom of the pile. When we updated that league table in June 2009, we reported some significant process from many of the UK's big retailers – with Sainsbury’s, Co-op, M&S, Waitrose and Asda all increasing their commitments to more responsible sourcing of the tuna in their cans.

Update on tinned tuna, June 2009: how have the retailers have responded to our report?

We already know that John West's website contains plenty of corporate puffery. After all, this is the company that claims to "only purchase fish which is caught with no harm to the marine environment" but which came a dismal last in our sustainability league table of tinned tuna brands. Yes, John West truly is John Worst on tinned tuna.