By Patrick Anderson
Gloucester Times
The gleaming cod delivered whole from Paul Mettivier’s Debra Ann II to shareholders in the Cape Ann Fresh Catch program were pulled from the ocean just hours earlier and only a few miles from the dock.
That would seem to epitomize the ideal of locally harvested, sustainable food.
But according to the expert authors of a growing number of “eco-friendly” seafood guides, the Fresh Catch cod, like most New England seafood, is best avoided if you care about the health of the oceans.
From environmental nonprofits to food conglomerates, celebrity chefs to aquariums, the business of “greening” seafood has taken off in tandem with trendy calls for socially-conscious eating and dire predictions that the seemingly limitless stocks of fish are verging on collapse.
Even Wal-Mart has promised to sell only “sustainable seafood” by 2011.
But who decides what’s sustainable seafood and how?
Several groups are engaged in the business of issuing seafood seals-of-approval that are supposed to point consumers toward more enlightened buying choices. But depending on priorities, ideology and business connections, one expert’s sustainable harvest may be another’s tragedy of the oceans.
Some species now on many “green” lists — like Atlantic swordfish — just a few years ago were the subject of boycotts based on disputed claims they were on the verge of being fished into extinction. East Coast chefs made a show of removing swordfish from their menus.
Other fish, like the groundfish that have been at the heart of the Gloucester and New England fishing industry for centuries, may OK to eat — or not. The buyer needs to know where it was caught and how to be sure.
The Debra Ann II’s cod, for example, are not OK to eat because stocks of Gulf of Maine cod are depleted and because the fish are caught with nets, according to some arbiters of what’s “green” and what’s not.
“Their claims are all crazy,” says Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, which helps run Fresh Catch.
“Our fishermen all follow strict regulations for mesh size and gear,” she says, “and they cannot even catch all of the allowable catch” because of federal restrictions designed to make sure the stocks are sustainable.
Buying foreign
“Buying local,” let alone buying American, is not a virtue to any of the leading groups that rate seafood.
That’s especially true when it comes to green certification programs, whose pay-to-play system tends to favor large industrial fisheries, many of them foreign.
The United States has some of the strictest fisheries management regulations in the world, yet imports around 80 percent of its seafood, much of it from countries, such as China, with poor environmental records.
Read the entire story on the Gloucester Time