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Wholesale and retail fish and seafood dealers primarily conduct merchant distribution of fish and seafood that are not canned or packaged frozen. Wholesalers sell and distribute seafood in bulk. Retailers, on the other hand, can include markets that sell only seafood and fish, those that sell both seafood and meats, and supermarkets that offer prepared seafood for sale to eat on the premises or for takeout. Some companies combine both wholesale and retail operations.

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Read our Best’s Review article to learn more about the risks that wholesale and retail fish and seafood dealers face. You’ll also find excerpts from our reports, including information on lines of coverage and questions for on-site inspections.

The Best's Underwriting Report offers a detailed summary of each line of insurance, answering questions such as:

  • How does the insured determine that their seafood is obtained from a reputable supplier?
  • What are the essential characteristics of a loading dock that is safe for both goods and workers?

The Best’s Loss Control Report gives you the big picture for exposures and controls, with questions to consider such as:

  • Are temperatures of all incoming shipments examined by inserting a thermometer into the seafood to verify that the correct shipping temperature has been maintained? Are suppliers notified immediately if the temperature is higher?
  • How much training do employees receive before being allowed to operate fish slicers unsupervised?

Wholesale and retail fish and seafood dealers, based on the Global Industry Classification Standard* for Specialized Consumer Services, have an MSCI ESG Risk Intensity Score** of 7 as of September 24, 2024.

*The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is the global industry classification standard jointly developed by MSCI and S&P Global Market Intelligence and a widely accepted approach to defining industries and classifying securities by industry.

**The ESG Risk Intensity Score is a quantitative assessment of industry ESG risk, where a score of 10 corresponds to the highest level of risk relative to all other industries. Each GICS sub-industry’s ESG Risk Intensity Score is based on the average risk score across the environmental, social and governance pillars, which is then converted into a decile-based score, where a score of 10 is assigned to the top 10% highest-risk sub-industries. For more information on MSCI ESG products and services, please contact ClientService@msci.com.

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