Vital Choice Awarded B Corp Status

Food, Health, and Eco-news

Vital Choice Awarded B Corp Status
We’ve been certified as a socially responsible company by independent, non-profit B Lab 12/18/2014 By Randy Hartnell, President

As many of you know, I spent more than 20 years fishing Alaskan waters for salmon and herring.

But in the late 1990s, large industrial salmon farming began to carve its way into the traditional markets for our fish, with devastating results.

Carla and I needed a new way to support our family … but when we founded Vital Choice in 2002, we wanted to do more than offer high-quality wild salmon and seafood.

We also sought to promote people's health, support wild salmon and the people who catch it, and continually improve our products, services, and customer satisfaction. (Learn more here.)

And we wanted our business to always be guided by integrity and high moral principles.

I realize that sounds ambitious, maybe even presumptuous … but we've really tried to follow our original vision … and do well enough to enable high standards and good livelihoods for our people.

We recently received a very rewarding validation of our success, from the independent, non-profit group known as B Lab … creators of the innovative B Corp program.

After completing a thorough application process that probed every aspect of our business, Vital Choice has now been certified as a B Corp.

B Corp certification means that Vital Choice met B Lab's rigorous social, environmental, accountability, and transparency standards.

Click here to view our B Corp profile page, where you can access B Lab's full report on Vital Choice.

As part of the certification process, we were asked to define “The Change We Seek”, and this is the response we submitted:

Vital Choice is committed to nourishing and healing bodies, minds, and Mother Earth by providing easy access to premium ‘real' foods that are among the safest, healthiest, and most sustainable available.

Our efforts to be good neighbors and citizens include several initiatives:

We strive to ensure the purity and safety of our products.
We pay Vital Choice employees to spend two days per year on volunteer work.
We provide Vital Choice employees with free nutritional supplements, to support wellness.
We offer ONLY sustainably harvested seafood, and natural – mostly certified-organic – foods.
Our Vital Green program provides carbon offsets for our shipping and recyclable or compostable packing boxes.
Our organic beef is grass-fed and humanely raised, and our 80% Extra Dark Chocolate is certified Fair Trade.
We contribute a portion of our net profits to groups devoted to the health and well-being of people and the planet that sustains us, including the Weil Foundation, The Monterey Bay Aquarium, Healthy Child Healthy World, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and others.

We've taken great joy and satisfaction in serving others, a philosophy captured in this verse by the famed Bengali poet-musician Rabindranath Tagore:

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and behold, service was joy.

Carla and I thank you for supporting Vital Choice and our mission with your purchases – and kind referrals to friends and family – without which Vital Choice would have remained just a vision!

Randy Hartnell,

President & Chief Executive Officer