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| Source: | LOHAS Weekly Newsletter |
| Published: | Wednesday, November 01, 2000 |
The problem hits close to home for the nation's chefs. A study by the Stanford Graduate School of Business reports that 67 percent of U.S. seafood is sold in restaurants. “Recognizing both our influence as chefs and that our oceans' fish supply is a vital source of food—as well as social, cultural, ecological and economic well-being—it is time to extend our principles toward the world of seafood,” reads the organization's mission statement.
The problem is real. Population growth and the desire for high-quality protein has pushed fish harvests to the point of collapse. “Years of relentless exploitation have taken their toll,” says Ann Platt McGinn of the Worldwatch Institute. “Eleven of the world's 15 most important fishing areas and 70 percent of the major fish species are either fully or overexploited.”
Yet, as catches of wild fish have declined, the amount of aquaculture-raised fish has tripled since 1985 and now comprises nearly one-quarter of world fish production, which reached an all-time high of 121 billion metric tons in 1996.
Ideally, fish farming could reduce fishing pressure on declining wild populations. The reality, however, is something different, as the Chefs Collaborative concluded in a recently released report, “Seafood Solutions—A Chef's Guide to Ecologically Responsible Fish Procurement.” Aquaculture has not
only masked the condition of declining fish stocks and allowed countries to turn a blind eye to unsustainable practices and over-fishing but has also created a whole new set of problems by causing chemical and biological pollution and
by destroying natural habitat, the report found. And some farm-raised fish
actually create a protein deficit by requiring three pounds of fish meal, made from wild-caught fish, to produce one pound of meat.
That's the bad news. The good news is that some important fisheries are well-managed and healthy. Alaskan fisheries are an example of what can be accomplished with strictly enforced regulations. While wild fish stocks plummet around the world, Alaskan salmon harvests have averaged about 900 million pounds for the past five years, according to government figures. Alaskan salmon fisheries have been certified as sustainable by the U.S.-based, scientifically independent Marine Stewardship Council—one of only three fisheries worldwide to be so deemed.
Alaskan halibut, pollock, cod and crab fisheries are also under strict management plans and have, within natural population fluctuations, produced sustained yields for the past decade.
Lessons from Alaska's strictly managed, healthy fisheries are helping to steer governments to control harmful fishing practices. A case in point is the Atlantic swordfish. Spurred on by a 1998 swordfish boycott organized by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Marine Fisheries Service this summer enacted a ban on long-line fishing—a practice in which hundreds of baited hooks are trawled on lines miles long—in 100,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The ban is expected to be effective enough that the boycott on swordfish has now been lifted.
This is the kind of action the Chefs Collaborative is hoping to mobilize, according to Program Director Amy Bodiker. “We're trying to raise the profile of the problems and educate the industry and consumers on how they can contribute to the solution,” she says.
Paul Gingrich, meat and seafood buyer for 110 Wild Oats Markets (OATS), based in Boulder, Colo., welcomes the issue leadership of the Chefs Collaborative. “The chefs need to be the leaders in this movement instead of the retailers,” he says, citing mixed reactions to his company's joining the swordfish boycott. “We got a lot of
e-mails and comments supporting the decision, so from a political point of view it was a good thing. From a business point of view, a significant number of shoppers were disappointed. They said, 'Well, we'll just go down the street and get it.'”
Nevertheless, Wild Oats continues to exclude the overfished orange roughy and Chilean sea bass from its seafood selection. “You have to do what you believe is the right thing,” Gingrich says.
The revival of natural fisheries is proving to be a plus for consumers in terms of taste. In recent blind taste tests conducted by several sustainability-minded restaurants, wild salmon was consistently rated as having better taste and texture than farmed salmon, which are fed fish meal and raised in net pens in the ocean.
“This blind tasting was important to show the consumer the differences in flavor brought about by the environment in which fish are raised—one manipulated by man vs. the superior flavor of wild salmon, which has been allowed to mature through its natural lifecycle,” Nora Pouillon, owner of Washington-based Restaurant Nora,
one of the restaurants where the salmon tasting took place, told the Environmental News Network.
Net-pen-raised salmon pose an environmental threat to the ailing salmon fisheries of the Northwest, according to Chefs Collaborative. Besides discharging waste into waterways, farm fish have also escaped, polluting the gene pool of wild species of salmon. Recently developed genetically engineered salmon that grow twice as fast as their native counterparts could wreak havoc on wild populations should they escape, the group's report added.
The Audubon Guide to Seafood
Species to avoid to promote
sustainable fisheries:
Sustainable fish species: