Little fish salads in a can are not new to the tinned fish aisle but previously they mainly consisted of tuna and beans. This one has pasta with onion and capsicum and I was pleased to see well-caught tuna.
Ingredients (in order of greatest quantity first)
Cooked pasta (35%) (durum wheat, semolina, egg white)
This is normal everyday pasta, in the salad they are little shell shapes.
Purse seine-caught skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) (25%)
This means that the skipjack tuna are caught by a net which is put in the water to contain a school of tuna, then the bottom is drawn up as in a purse to catch them. This is seen as a sustainable method of fishing as it results in a small amount of by-catch of other species, especially when used for fish which school together such as sardines, mackerel, herring and tuna. However, Greenpeace argues that skipjack tuna, which is the tuna in this salad, often schools with other species such as young bigeye or yellowfin tuna which often end up in the nets as well as sharks, rays, turtles and other species of fish. John West are also criticised for using fish aggregating devices (FAD) which are floating objects designed to attract fish which are strategically placed in the ocean. John West has made a pledge that 100% of its tuna would be sustainable by 2016.
