SEAFOODNEWS.COM [The Editor’s View] By John Sackton – June 16, 2015 — Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish and American Catch: the Fight for Our Local Seafood, wrote a piece in the New York Times Sunday (Three Simple Rules for Eating Seafood), which once again falls short.
Greenberg says he is trying to emulate Michael Pollan, the food writer who famously said:
Eat Food.
Not too much.
Mostly Plants.
Pollan is one of the leading advocates for a reformed food system based on less meat, fewer manufactured and processed products, and more organic agriculture. These ideas are not just changing elite behavior. Even Walmart is seriously expanding its organic purchases.
But how does this relate to seafood.
Greenberg’s three rules are:
Eat American Seafood.
A much Greater Variety than we currently do.
Mostly Farmed Filter Feeders.
Unfortunately, Greenberg’s rules are driven by a general characterization of imports, which are mostly Asian products, and all products needing fishmeal inputs, as a bad choice. There is no science behind his thinking.
His buy American idea is based on a sound realization: that American fisheries management is among the best in the world, and that as a result, most US fisheries are quite sustainable. But in his effort to demonize Asia, he doesn’t acknowledge that since other countries, and individual fisheries, are also well managed, maybe they are as good as American based seafood.
A better formulation would be: Eat Fish from Well Managed Stocks.
His call for more variety in the American seafood diet is positive. There are many species that are less valued due to unfamiliarity, or due to the fact that large scale production is difficult. But there are also other constraints that are the result of good management, such as limits on removals due to bycatch restrictions.
His call to eat a greater variety of seafood is the one concept I would wholeheartedly endorse.
In the Michael Pollan style I would say simply: A Great Variety.
Finally, Greenberg makes a distinction in aquaculture (and wild fisheries) that favors filter feeders as they do not have to be fed. In other words they are low trophic feeders, eating plankton from the water column, rather than other fish.
The three species that are most heavily consumed in the US, shrimp, tuna and salmon, are all predators who normally eat other animals. Greenberg rejects them for this reason, at least in an aspirational manner.
He repeats the claim that Asian shrimp farms destroy mangroves. This was a problem when farmed shrimp first took off in the 1980’s and coastal land was converted to ponds without regard for mangroves. But that was over 30 years ago. Today, practically every tropical country producing farmed shrimp has regulations protecting mangroves or requiring reforestation.
Loss of mangroves is not just due to shrimp farms. The build out on the coasts, including airports, hotels, resorts and casinos is rapidly depleting coastal marshes and wetlands around the world. This is a huge environmental problem for all fisheries, and for us in the seafood industry, because estuaries and wetlands are a vital part of the marine ecosystem. The objection here is casting this problem at the feet of irresponsible shrimp farmers, rather than overall irresponsible coastal development.
I would characterize it as insufficient national protections against all forms of degradation including the huge amounts of nitrogen run off that degrade American waters such as the Chesapeake and create dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
So lets agree that the environmental degradation of both oceans and coastal areas is a consequence of large scale development, not simply the result of overfishing or growth of aquaculture.
In fact, by focusing on overfishing as the primary visible issue in the degradation of the marine environment, many NGO’s are simply battling the low hanging fruit. The fact is that overfishing can be eliminated conclusively with proper fish management.
It is much harder to address nitrogen run off from agriculture, and the increasing ocean acidity from burning fossil fuels. The seafood industry recognizes that this type of pollution damages marine ecosystems – but needs allies and a broader social movement to curb these things. Instead, many NGO’s marine conservation departments, who should be natural allies of the seafood industry, prefer to focus on hitting us .. because they can get more financial support that way than if their marine sections took on fossil fuels or over use of fertilizers from the perspective of their damage to marine ecosystems.
To go back to science, forage fisheries can be managed sustainably in the exact same way as other fisheries.
The California sardine fishery is a good example. The closure is the result of prudent management and understanding of the cyclical nature of recruitment. It is not the result of overfishing. All scientist who have looked at this agree on this point.
So if forage fisheries, include the anchovy fishery in Peru, can be managed successfully, there is no scientific argument that use of forage fisheries to produce fishmeal and oil is unsustainable.
The NGO argument, that Paul Greenberg repeats, is that because salmon feed contains fishmeal, the growth of farmed salmon inevitably leads to overfishing pressure on forage fish.
Yet, this has not happened. Instead, the growth of the farmed salmon industry has occurred with the same level of fishmeal production over time. The growth has been based on more efficient use of fishmeal and oil, not more overall use.
To quote the research on this subject from FAO and the International Fishmeal and Oil Association:
“The concern that expanding aquaculture is currently using more and more fishmeal and fish oil is misplaced. Producers of aquafeeds had recognized by early this century that supplies of these ingredients were finite. Sustainable production from well managed fisheries had a ceiling of about 5 million tons of fishmeal and 1 million tons of fish oil per year.”
The result is that fishmeal and fish oil are being used more efficiently, more strategically at lower levels (i. e. in fry and brood stock diets) and, in part, substituted by alternative ingredients. The total amount required has leveled off.
The two charts below illustrate this point:
Overall use of fishmeal and fish oil in Aquaculture (IFFO/FAO)
Improvements in conversion efficiency and changing composition of salmon feed (IFFO)
(UPDATE: For 2013 inclusion is 15 % fishmeal and the oil content is 1/3 fish oil and 2/3 vegetable oil. Some major producer grower diets are down to 10 % fishmeal)
In 2000 2.6 kg of wild fish were used for each kg of farmed salmonid (salmon and trout) produced. By 2010 this had fallen to 1.4kg. On many salmon farms only one kg or less of wild fish is used for each kilogram of salmon produced. Overall fed aquaculture produces three times more fish by weight than it uses in feed, in the form of fishmeal and fish oil. (IFFO DATA)
So if we base our approach to sustainable aquaculture on science rather than myth, a better formulation of Greenberg’s last point would be:
And From Responsible Aquaculture.
So, Greenberg could improve his advice to American Seafood Eaters by focusing on science, and avoiding repeating myths that have largely defined the NGO public agenda around seafood.
My own formulation of advice for eating seafood in three sentences is:
Eat fish from well managed stocks.
A great variety.
And from responsible aquaculture.
Happy eating.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.