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A GROWING number of supermarkets and restaurants proudly declare that the fish they sell is “sustainable” or “responsibly sourced”. This is a welcome sign that consumers are exercising their marketplace muscle to stop threatened species ending up on their plates. The trouble is that no consensus exists over what these labels mean – making it hard for consumers to distinguish genuine conservation efforts from dubious practices that hide behind ambiguous phraseology (see “Beware of ‘bluewash’: Which fish should you buy?”). The issue of declining fish stocks is too important to allow these initiatives to be undermined by specious or exaggerated…