Five years in the making — what is the driving force behind the birth of Seven-Eleven’s first certified seafood products?（Part 1）

After taking on several roles, including store management consultant, at Seven-Eleven Japan for roughly 10 years, Kohei Yagita was responsible for product development at the Product Department, and from 2017, he was also responsible for raw material procurement. As soon as he was put in charge of procurement, he was asked by an international environmental NGO to complete a survey on the procurement of raw materials for seafood products, which led him to start sustainable seafood initiatives.

Five years later, in 2022, the company launched rice balls made with red salmon and spicy cod roe, using only “Alaskan seafood” caught through environmentally friendly fishing practices.

In the first part of this interview, I asked Mr. Yagita, who was also a speaker at Tokyo Sustainable Seafood Summit 2024, about episodes in his research into raw material procurement, his encounter with Seafood Legacy president Wakao Hanaoka, and the secrets behind the launch of rice balls under the Alaska Seafood label.

Kohei Yagita
Joined Seven-Eleven Japan in 2005. After working as a store management consultant, he joined the company’s Product Division in 2013. He was in charge of seafood raw material procurement and environmental strategy within Product HQ, and from 2021, he was the plastic strategy sub-leader of Seven & i Holdings’ Environmental Subcommittee. He is currently the chief merchandiser of the rice & noodle category, one of the company’s major product groups.

“Are you sure you’re asking the right person? Bewildered by a sudden request to complete a survey, he took the first step down the path of sustainable seafood

—— I understand that you were put in charge of raw material procurement at Seven-Eleven Japan, and at the same time, you were also assigned to research the procurement of raw materials for seafood products. Please tell us about any episodes from those experiences of yours.

Seven-Eleven Japan is a retailer that does not have its own factories; we work with manufacturers to develop and produce original products. Our stores are managed by the owners of our franchisees. In this context, I was not exclusively engaged in procurement of seafood products from the beginning. While shuttling between the product development and procurement departments, I work as a merchandiser for Seven-Eleven, teaming up with and directing foodstuff and raw material manufacturers.

In general, product development at Seven-Eleven is not a matter of making specific products because we have specific ingredients. Rather, we aim to develop products that meet the needs of our customers, rather than basing our product development on circumstances relating to ingredients or manufacturers, and we proceed with procurement and product development on the basis of needing a specific ingredient to make a specific product. For this reason, I arrived at the procurement department without much actual knowledge of seafood products. Soon after my appointment, I was asked by an international environmental NGO to complete a survey on the procurement of raw materials for seafood products.

Looking back on it now, the survey form that I received was 35 pages long. At the time, I was bewildered by all the terms that I had never seen before. The questions were about tuna, but they were very technical and detailed, and I remember thinking, “Did they send this survey to the wrong address? Why did they send it to us, a retailer, instead of a foodstuff manufacturer?”, as I struggled to answer the questions in the survey. For me, it was like a gun going off, heralding the dawn of the era of sustainable seafood.

—— I understand that you met Hanaoka the following year. What was your impression of him at the time?

It was Mr. Hanaoka who made an appointment with us. When I looked into what kind of person he was, I came across an old photograph of him as a member of an international environmental NGO, demonstrating with a megaphone in front of Ito-Yokado. When I saw that photograph, I thought to myself, “This is a big problem — won’t I be reprimanded if I meet with him?” However, when I received the appointment, he had already launched Seafood Legacy, so I scheduled another appointment with Mr. Hanaoka, and we met.

At the time, I was in a position where I decided procurement policy, so I asked him for advice on a range of matters, and I was impressed by Mr. Hanaoka’s attitude. I thought that it would take someone like him, who had majored in marine environmental science and marine biology at a university in Florida, and was at the forefront of a movement to “protect the oceans”, to go from being the north wind to being the sun, so to speak, and developing a close relationship with business.

Receiving the survey in 2017 and meeting with Mr. Hanaoka in 2018 were major turning points for me. In addition, there was something else that happened in 2019, and these three events are still the driving force behind my activities.

What if the fish we usually eat are produced at someone else’s expense?

—— Mr. Yagita, you mentioned that there were three driving forces behind your sustainable seafood activities. Tell us about the event in 2019 that because your third driving force.

Thanks to my meeting with Mr. Hanaoka, I had the opportunity to attend the SeaWeb Seafood Summit held in Bangkok in 2019. There, I heard a story about a blind monk who had experienced forced labor in the fishing industry. Without knowing anything about it, he and his fellow workers were put on a vessel and forced to work, subjected to excessive violence, and did not even get to sleep for days on end. He told us that his companion committed suicide by jumping into the ocean, and that he himself did the same, but escaped with his life and lost his sight. He became a monk to mourn for his companion.

“Please don’t eat the fish we catch” — as I listened to his message, I thought to myself, “There is no guarantee my family or I will never taste the fish they catch”. When the international environmental NGO asked me to complete the survey, I thought that there was no way that we could know about such things, but at that moment, I began to think that we have to know.

At the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Bangkok in 2019. Mr. Yagita is seated third from the right.

Strict national guidelines for food hygiene have been imposed in Japan since then. However, when I heard the monk’s story, I thought that compared to food produced with low awareness of hygiene management, I would feel much worse about eating food caught through the use of forced labor. While it is impossible to say that such food will never make it to Japanese shores, I felt that we had to take thorough measures to prevent such a thing from happening.

Achieving something within the constraints of business — label products given shape by passionate feelings

—— After that, in 2022, you launched rice balls made with Alaskan seafood fillings under the Alaska Seafood label*.

At the time, we were already selling rice balls made with Alaskan red salmon and spicy cod roe. I worked to put some kind of sustainable certification label on our products, and that finally came in the shape of the Alaska Seafood label.

Seven-Eleven Japan does not have its own factories, and its stores are also managed by franchisees. Consequently, it is difficult to obtain CoC certification, or to put certification labels that requires payment of usage fees on our products. The Alaska Seafood label was the best we could do.

*Alaska Seafood: Alaskan seafood that has achieved sustainability in the fishing industry not only through strict fishery management, but also through a variety of public and private sector efforts, including the revitalization of local fishing communities, the effective use of resources, and the operation of sustainable fishery certification programs.

Rice balls sold with the Alaska Seafood label

This initiative was made possible thanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of a manager at one of our suppliers, who shared the same feelings I did after we attended the Seafood Summit in Bangkok together. With his help, our supplier’s factory obtained the MSCCoC group certification in February — something which I had been working on together with him.

It also helped that Mr. Hanaoka taught me about the importance of disclosing the current situation, of setting goals with clear timelines, and of openly disclosing information about progress made, even if goals have not been achieved. This is now common practice due to the trend towards ESG investment, but it was a huge realization for me at the time.

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Five years after Mr. Yagita became involved in sustainable seafood in 2017, he was able to manifest his activities up until that point in the form of the Alaska Seafood label. In the second part of this interview, he will talk about the importance of building consumer awareness, his future goals, and what he believes is necessary to bring sustainable seafood into the mainstream.

Original Japanese text：Shino Kawasaki