Saving Seafood

Oceana, NRDC call for expansion of Seafood Import Monitoring Program

March 8, 2021 — Marine sustainability non-governmental organization Oceana public on 3 March calling for the expansion of the U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) and for mandatory full-chain traceability requirements for all seafood sold in the United States.

The report, “Transparency and Traceability: Tools to Stop Illegal Fishing,” criticizes the current limitations of SIMP, in that the law currently applies to just 13 types of imported seafood and traces them to the U.S. border, not beyond. Extending SIMP to cover all seafood species sold in the United States, and requiring that all be covered by full-chain traceability from boat to plate, would reduce species mislabeling and help in the fight against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, Oceana said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Grocery Industry Grapples With New Transparency Requirements

December 8th, 2016 — With a new presidential administration headed to Washington, D.C., next month, augmented by Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, the implications for the food industry are on the minds of many.

The legislative and regulatory policies enacted in the past eight years — which include what is widely viewed as the most sweeping food safety updates since the 1950s, culminating in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) — have been significant.

It remains to be seen whether the incoming president will completely dismantle, maintain or only tweak the existing rules and regulations. In the meantime, as retailers continue to refine and retool their food safety practices in the wake of the passage of FSMA, they’re running into issues related to compliance.

“The greatest challenge for retailers to ensure food safety lies in achieving total supply chain visibility all the way back to the farm or manufacturing plant,” asserts Angela Fernandez, VP of retail grocery and foodservice for Lawrenceville, N.J.-based GS1 US, leader of the GS1 US Retail Grocery Initiative and the Foodservice GS1 US Standards Initiative. “Product traceability enables stakeholders to locate potentially harmful products within the supply chain in the event of a recall or foodborne illness outbreak. To do this, they need standardized data they can retrieve quickly and accurately — or precisely, to those products that truly need to be removed from shelves.”

Read the full story at the Progressive Grocer

 

RON SMOLOWITZ: Working the system makes the system unworkable

April 4, 2016 — FALMOUTH, Mass. — As the owner of Coonamessett Farm in Falmouth and a partner at the Woods Hole Oyster Co., I spend as much time navigating regulatory hurdles as I do tending the farm or going to sea. Many farmers and fishermen have similar fights with overbearing bureaucracy, something likely to become more common as the noose of government regulations tightens.

The most recent regulatory push in Massachusetts is to ban the farming of caged chickens. I theoretically stand to benefit from this, as my free-ranged eggs would increase in value. But this doesn’t consider the regulatory system that will be imposed on my farm to ensure compliance. My farm currently allows visitors to pick their own eggs, an activity that kids enjoy but that will be illegal, I’m sure, under any regulations. The federal Food Safety Modernization Act, a result of food safety advocates working the system in Washington, continues to evolve as the Food and Drug Administration encounters hurdles to its enforcement. In some respects it resembles the farm animal protection initiative being advocated in Massachusetts, but it targets every crop on the farm. Looking at the FDA’s guidelines, I don’t think I can find a workaround to keep farming and sell to the public. I certainly won’t be able to allow the public on the farm or be allowed to keep my farm animals, given concerns about the proximity of animal dung to farm crops.

Things aren’t much better out at sea. I do a substantial amount of research for the scallop industry, and sustainability is the key reason scallop management is a continued successes. Through a system of rotational management, certain zones are fished while others are left off-limits to allow them to repopulate. Much as with farmland, this system allows the resources to remain sustainable.

Read the full column at the Cape Cod Times