Three cheers for Roger Berkowitz.
The president and CEO of Legal Sea Foods, one of New England's iconic restaurant chains and also a major buyer from the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, is not about to tell anybody what fish they should or should not eat.
But he doesn't think environmental activists should be dictating seafood choices to Americans either — especially when those recommendations, supposedly based on the health of wild seafood stocks, aren't backed by any current and credible science.
And even moreso when those dictates undermine the fishing economies of cities like Gloucester, New Bedford and other fishing communities around New England and across the country.
So he's putting a meal where his mouth is.
Berkowitz, at the invitation of the Culinary Guild of Massachusetts, will be hosting a one-night event at the Legal Seafoods in Park Square, Boston, on Jan. 24 that will feature seafood that has been "blacklisted" by some environmental groups, with the menu to feature tiger shrimp, cod cheeks and hake.
This takes a measure of courage. It is an in-your-face challenge to the so-called Big Green environmental lobby — which now even has one of its own at the top of the federal fishing regulatory system.
Jane Lubchenco, chosen in 2009 by President Obama to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a former vice-chairwoman of the board of the Environmental Defense Fund, the folks who have brought us such economic policies as "cap and trade" and now the "catch share" regulatory system designed in large part to drive small, independent fishermen and fishing businesses right out of the industry.
She is also a co-author of a policy paper sponsored by the EDF that declared the New England cod had been "decimated" by human greed, and that the oceans would soon be populated by "massive swarms of jellyfish rather than food fish."
But if anyone can pull off such a challenge, it would likely be Berkowitz. The 31-restaurant chain, which began as a fish market more than a century ago in Cambridge's Inman Square, has built a solid reputation on featuring fresh, local seafood.
And Berkowitz is following the philosophy expressed by several of America's most prominent citizens, including the late Democratic Sen. Patrick Moynihan, who have said, "Each of us is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."
Berkowitz contends that the so-called "eco-labelers" — like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which publishes Seafood Watch — are "brainwashing" not only consumers but restaurants as well, which fear the wrath of environmentalists if they serve blacklisted fish."
Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.