Criticized by environmental activists, the store apologized on Friday and admitted to having violated the “tidal policy of the E. Leclerc brand”.
The case sparked strong reactions on social networks. A commercial operation of an E. Leclerc center aimed to market blue sharks. Spotted by environmentalists, it was finally canceled.
In a charade posted on Facebook at the end of the week, the Blaye store explained that a “new species“, described as “pelagicand having askin colorparticular was arriving in the fishmonger’s section.
Response from activists
“I am a blue shark, a species whose numbers are collapsing to the point that I am listed as critically endangered in the Mediterranean“, reacted the journalist and environmental activist, Hugo Clément, on Twitter.
“When endangered species continue to be authorized for sale, it gives this: the worst of advertising creativity in the service of the worst of fishing“, was offended the NGO Sea Shepherd France, on the same network.
Violation of the “tidal policy”
Strongly challenged by several activists, the store reacted on Friday by apologizing on its Facebook page and acknowledging that it had violated the “tide policy of E. Leclerc“.
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“Since 2017, E.Leclerc has had a list of species prohibited from marketing and the blue shark is one of them.,” the post reads, adding that the team is committed to “never to reproduce this error and to respect the tide policy of the E.Leclerc centers to the letter“.
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Opening of an internal investigation
Another E. Leclerc store had already been the subject of vehement criticism from environmental activists two years ago, by offering a thresher shark – a classified species “vulnerableon a global scale andin dangerin European waters – in Vitry-sur-Seine.
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Faced with the outcry, the management had also apologized and opened an internal investigation for “understand how such an error had been possible“.
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