Saving Seafood

Despite parent company’s woes, National Seafood turns a profit

October 3, 2016 — The bankruptcy proceedings involving international seafood processing giant Pacific Andes International Holdings has pulled back the curtain on the performance of its Gloucester-based subsidiary, National Fish & Seafood.

Quoting filings in Pacific Andes’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in New York, the Undercurrent News website reported that National Fish, normally mute on all matters related to its financial performance, turned a $1.28 million profit on revenues of $115 million for the six-month period that ended March 31.

That appears to be a marked improvement over the seafood processing subsidiary’s performance in the year that ended Sept. 28, 2015, when National Fish reported a similar profit of $1.27 million on revenues of $252.7 million for the entire 12-month period.

To date, National Fish, which processes and markets more than 40,000 tons of frozen seafood annually at its East Main Street facility under the National Fish, Matlaw’s and Schooner brands, has remained above the bankruptcy fray even as Pacific Andes has explored selling off other subsidiaries to pay creditors.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

More than 80 percent want new safeguards against seafood fraud and mislabeling

September 28, 2016 — WASHINGTON — A new survey by Oceana finds more than 4 of 5 Americans want new regulations to eliminate seafood fraud and mislabeling of fish in the United States.

The survey found that support for traceability requirements – like documenting how and where various types of fish were caught or farmed – was high among registered Democratic voters – 87 percent and Republicans – 81 percent.

The national survey by Oceana, an international ocean conservation group, queried 1,000 registered voters from September 15-19.

It found 71 percent believe seafood fraud is a problem, 76 percent would pay more to know their seafood products are legally caught and labled correctly, while 88 percent feel it’s important to know the kind of seafood they’re consuming.

Read the full story from McClatchy DC at the Miami Herald

Aquaculture Stewardship Council – setting global standards for responsible farming

September 15, 2016 — The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is a global, independent non-profit organisation established in 2010 by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) to manage the global standards for responsible aquaculture with the aim to transform seafood markets towards responsible practices.

The ASC works with aquaculture producers, seafood processors, retail and food-service companies, scientists, and conservation groups around the world using its global influence to fulfil its mission to transform aquaculture towards environmental sustainability and social responsibility.

The ASC certification programme recognises and rewards responsible farming activities focusing on the preservation and quality of water resources, preservation of biodiversity and the diversity of species, no misuse of antibiotics,  compliance with strict feed requirements and social responsibility.

The ASC logo is a globally recognised mark for responsibly farmed seafood that is fully traceable to a farm that has been independently certified to the ASC standard and cares for the environment, its workers and the local community.

A growing number of companies are making a stand to encourage responsible farming and consumers can be part of that change through their shopping choices. By choosing ASC labelled products consumers can help ensure the health of the oceans, the livelihoods of local communities, and the availability of seafood for the future.

Increased consumer demand for certified seafood influences lower performance farms in greater numbers to undergo the rigorous assessment against the ASC standards, thereby improve their farming practices and reducing adverse environmental and social impacts.

Read the full story at Aquaculture Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester Fresh banks on ocean-to-table appeal

September 12, 2016 — This is a story that starts at 2 o’clock in the morning, when those who work on Gloucester fishing boats rise for the day, ready to hit the water.

“Gloucester Fresh” is the mantra coming from America’s oldest fishing port, intended to tap into the farm-to-table trend while applying it to the Atlantic Ocean. The bid to reinvigorate the city’s historic industry conjures a tradition of hard work, blue water, fresh air, and one of nature’s most beneficial resources.

“This is a very healthy protein,” said Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, whose husband, John, is one of the hardy souls who sets off in the early morning and returns to the dock at 3 p.m. with that day’s catch. “It’s the only natural protein left in the world. You’re talking about the North Atlantic, the cleanest water around the United States. We’ve fought very hard so we can keep a clean ocean for the fish.”

While cod, flounder, and haddock continue to serve as the breadwinners, the ocean-to-table movement is promoting underused species such as whiting and redfish that are often eaten by fishermen’s families but not often found on restaurant menus. Exposing consumers to new species is the reason Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken has been demonstrating how to cook redfish soup at seafood shows.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Switch and chips: 20 percent of fish are purposely mislabeled, sometimes dangerously

September 9, 2016 — In the bizarro world of seafood fraud, a fish is not always what it seems.

When sold in Brazil, largetooth sawfish — a species classified as critically endangered — becomes anonymous “shark.”

When sold in a certain Santa Monica, Calif., sushi shop, illegal whale meat became fatty tuna. (The restaurant has since shut down.)

And when sold across the United States, cheap Asian catfish becomes one of 18 types of white fish fraudsters want it to be, according to a recent report.

Worldwide, one in five pieces of fish meat is incorrectly named on the menu or label, revealed the new survey representing 25,000 fish samples.

Oceana, a marine conservation and advocacy group, released the report on Wednesday, and updated the global map it created in 2014. The new map is interactive and highlights news stories of restaurant fraud, as well as DNA analysis and other scientific studies.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Oceana going overboard on fish fraud, according to seafood industry group

September 9, 2016 — The National Fisheries Institute (NFI) is calling into question both the findings and motives of the latest fish fraud study by Oceana, a global environmental group. The action marks a break between the two groups since they previously were largely in sync with one another over the worldwide problem of fish fraud, which is where lesser-value species are marketed as higher-value ones.

NFI claims that by finding 20 percent of all seafood mislabeled globally, Oceana’s latest report is both overstating the problem and unnecessarily calling for an expanded regulatory bureaucracy when enforcement of existing laws is all that is needed.

NFI, a trade association representing the seafood industry with a core mission of sustainability, charges that the environmental group has turned to “misleading hyperbole.”

“Mislabeling is fraud and fraud is illegal, period,” reads the NFI statement released on its website. “That’s why NFI members are all required to be members of the Better Seafood Board, the only seafood industry-led economic integrity effort. Our members are at the forefront of getting rid of fish fraud.”

Oceana’s study is misleading because it looked too heavily at commonly mislabeled species, the group asserts.

“Oceana’s focus on the most often mislabeled species distorts its findings by design. It is a common technique that ironically perpetuates a fraud on the readers of these reports,” the NFI statement adds.

Read the full story at Food Safety News

How to Make Sure Your Fish Wasn’t Caught by Slaves

September 8, 2016 — For years, news outlets have been reporting on the systemic use of slavery in commercial fishing in places such as New Zealand and Thailand. With much of the industry’s byproduct ending up in the United States and Europe—according to a report in The Guardian, “The U.S., U.K., and E.U. are prime buyers of this seafood—with Americans buying half of all Thailand’s seafood exports and the U.K. alone consuming nearly 7 percent of all Thailand’s prawn exports.”—there’s a strong possibility that at some point, slave-caught fish has been served on a dinner plate near you. But thanks to blockchain, a technology best known as the basis for Bitcoin, soon there will be a new digital weapon to fight slave labor.

“We want to help support fish that is caught sustainably and verify these claims down the chain to help drive the market for slavery-free fish,” Provenance founder Jessi Baker told the Guardian. Provenance is an organization dedicated to socially responsible consumerism—it recently began piloting a blockchain program with the Co-Op Food group in the United Kingdom. “This pilot shows that complex, global supply chains can be made transparent by using blockchain technology.”

Currently, the only way to track the progress of seafood through the region’s supply chain is with paper records and tagged animals. According to the Guardian, the world’s biggest tuna exporter, the Thai Union, is all for utilizing blockchain technology. “Traceability—which allows us to prove that our fish is caught legally and sustainably and that safe labor conditions are met throughout the supply chain—is vital if we are to interest consumers in the source of their tuna,” the union’s director of sustainability Dr. Darian McBain told the paper.

Read the full story at Food & Wine

JOHN SACKTON: Oceana Uses ‘Study’ on Seafood Fraud to Push for More Traceability Regulation

September 8, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Oceana has released a new ‘study’ claiming that 20% of global seafood trade is mislabeled.

The study was not a scientific sampling, but instead an analysis of Oceana’s sampling of high-risk species in various countries such as escolar, pangasius, and hake.  They also had a high proportion of snapper and grouper samples, species where literally dozens of genetically distinct species are legally sold under one name.

However, the implication to consumers is that they should suspect that their McDonald’s pollock fillet could potentially be mislabeled.  It is not.

The seafood industry and the supply chain have focused increasingly on traceability in the past few years.

NFI says “mislabeling is fraud and fraud is illegal, period. We emphasize that NFI members are required to be members of the Better Seafood Board, the only seafood industry-led economic integrity effort. And NFI Member Companies are at the forefront of eliminating fish fraud.”

NFI suggests that Oceana would be far more effective lobbying for stronger enforcement of existing laws.

The report was released prior to an upcoming Our Oceans conference in Washington, and also to pressure the  Presidential Task Force on Combating IUU Fishing and Seafood Fraud to issue stronger recommendations.

The task force has proposed to require traceability for 13 species deemed to be at risk of IUU fishing and fraudulent labeling.  However, the requirements would only be for imports, and not apply to commerce within the US.

Oceana wants species scientific name traceability to extend to all seafood, period.  They hold up the EU traceability requirements for imports as a model, and say that this has helped reduce seafood fraud in Europe.  Yet at the same time they document numerous examples of mislabeling in the UK, Italy, Belgium and Germany and other EU countries (see map).

The fact is that importers still have little control over how restaurants menu their items.  Oceana admits this in a backhand fashion, saying in the report that the fraud numbers for Massachusetts are low due to the fact that most samples were from retail, and that retail stores generally label their products correctly.

Oceana is the NGO that ‘owns’ seafood mislabeling, relying on their mislabeling reports to get media attention. Other NGO’s have other brands.  The competition among NGOs for media attention, donations,  members, and activists can warp their approach to simple problems.  So for Oceana, DNA testing and labeling is the path to improved seafood sustainability.

Oceana recognizes that stronger fishery management and enforcement globally would eliminate overfishing and IUU fishing, but can’t make that case because it is indistinguishable from what is also being recommended by the global seafood industry, governments, the FAO, and all others with a stake in long-term seafood sustainability.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Seafood Nutrition Partnership Celebrates National Seafood Month

September 7, 2016 — The following was released by the Seafood Nutrition Partnership:

In celebration of National Seafood Month in October, the nonprofit Seafood Nutrition Partnership (SNP) is hosting and participating in a series of community events in eight U.S. cities, and is conducting a national seafood recipe sweepstakes.

The programming is part of SNP’s three-year public health education campaign to help Americans learn how to improve their heart health through increased consumption of seafood. While the 2015-2020 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend eating seafood at least twice per week—translating to an average consumption of 250 mg per day of omega-3s, which is rich in essential nutrients—only 10% of Americans currently follow this recommendation.

In eight target markets with high incidences of chronic diseases (Birmingham, AL; Charleston, WV; Indianapolis, IN; Jacksonville, FL; Lexington, KY; Memphis, TN; Oklahoma City, OK; and Toledo, OH), SNP will hold live events and assist community leaders in encouraging their constituents to take the Healthy Heart Pledge as a commitment to eat more seafood and supplement their diets with omega-3 fish oil.

On October 1, SNP will participate in 250 house parties across its eight target markets. Throughout October, programming will include health fairs and summits, seafood restaurant week events, cooking demonstrations and participation in major community gatherings.

Nationally, SNP is hosting the 2016 Seafood Recipe Sweepstakes, a program demonstrating how easy and delicious it is to add nutritious fish and shellfish to everyday meals. Ten sweepstakes winners, chosen at random from all entrants, will each receive a $250 gift card. The sweepstakes runs through October 21; details are available at snpsweepstakes.com.

SNP’s nutritional message continues to resonate: Last year, its ongoing public health campaign generated a total of 250 million earned media impressions nationally and in local markets.

SNP Executive Director Linda Cornish said, “We are excited to introduce more consumer education programs to teach Americans about the critical importance of seafood nutrition in supporting heart and brain health.”

See the full release at the Seafood Nutrition Partnership

Seafood fraud: A fishy business that’s on the rise

September 7, 2016 — Americans are increasingly concerned about where and how their food is grown and harvested. Yet many may not be aware that one type of food carries a high rate of fraud: seafood.

One in five of more than 25,000 seafood samples tested in studies across the globe have been found to be mislabeled, according to a report from the ocean conservation group Oceana. In most cases, the mislabeling involved a cheaper fish passed off as a more expensive type, which means consumers are overpaying in stores and restaurants.

The problem of mislabeling is serious on a number of fronts, Oceana said. Aside from the loss to consumers’ wallets, mislabeling can lead to serious health problems. Almost six in 10 of the mislabeled samples were fish that posed species-specific health risks to consumers, including toxins and environmental chemicals such as mercury.

“Safe food choices absolutely depend on accurate fish labeling that says what fish it was and where it was caught,” said Kimberly Warner, one of the authors of the report and senior scientist at Oceana. While some perpetrators go to jail or are fined, “there are plenty that don’t get caught,” she added.

Read the full story at CBS News