fish

A Delicious Sampling of Great Green Food Stories of 2008

scleaver — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The holidays are behind us now, and reflecting on 2008 (and what a year!) here are my top ten headlines from the RiverWired food blog (posted in order of appearance, starting in January):

1. Creative and ultimately delicious, Apple Farmer Uses Pigs Instead of Pesticides in January.

2. At last, help at the grocery store in Finally! A Guide to Eating Green.

3. The downer cow scandal breaks as Hallmark/Westland Goes to Congress.

4. Fish headlines started with Where Have All the Salmon Gone? back in March. The headlines continued in June (SOS: Save Our Salmon) and October (Seafood Delight).

5. Looking to the future, in the spring we were Building The Doomsday Vault -- Seeds to Save the Human Race. The seed bank is still growing and, according to the Chicago Tribune needs help with funding heading into 2009.

6. You know green is big when fast food companies join in: The Golden Green Arches?

7. This year, we learned about the impact of our food choices, from soup to nuts: Saving The World One Plate At A Time.

8. From organic to hormones in milk to hamburger meat, labels were big this year (see September’s: A Real Hamburger Helper).

9. But, once the bad financial headlines started rolling in, saving money at the grocery store became increasingly important. Hence November’s The Economics of Organics

10. And, our opinion was solicited again and again this year, on milk, corn, and more. The latest: The Department of Ag Wants Your Opinion on GE corn.

What headlines do you think were most important? Did I miss any?

Image from Stephanie Cleaver.

Shop Sustainable Seafood

scleaver — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:11:37 -0500

GreenPeace released the supermarket rankings on their seafood sustainability. As reported in The Food Section, Greenpeace graded 20 supermarket chains (national and regional) on their seafood purchasing and sales policies and practices.

Of the national and regional chains, none earned a “good” grade. Four supermarkets earned a passing grade: Whole Foods, Ahold, Target, and Harris Teeter. Right after the “passing” supermarkets, however, was Walmart. And, the lowest ranked four were Price Chopper, H.E. Butt, Meijer, and Trader Joe’s. Find your favorite supermarket on the Scorecard.

But, perhaps of more importance, Greenpeace also published a list of their favorite sustainable seafood retailers. (See the full list here.) On that list: Andronico’s Market in San Francisco, Hanover Co-op Food Stores, Davis Food Co-op, and my old favorite when I lived in the DC area, My Organic Market.

To find Greenpeace’s rating of a supermarket near you, use their Supermarket Search tool.

Image of an albacore tuna from Greenpeace.

The Future of Fish

scleaver — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:02:12 -0500

Forget the image that you have of hundreds of fish swimming downstream, waiting to be caught by an eager fisherman, then ending up stacked on ice in the grocery store. According to The New York Times, by 2050, most of the farm we eat will be raised on huge aquaculture farms, and our favorite species may be harder to find. Thanks to over-fishing, many of our favorite species demand more energy, money, and equipment to produce the same amount of fish (85 million tons each year) even as demand is sky-rocketing—global consumption has doubled since 1973.

But, fish-lovers, all hope is not lost! Well-managed fisheries can bring around a declining species. How to help the world get its fisheries under control so that your favorite maki roll is safe?

Expand your palate. Right now, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, “”the maximum wild-capture fisheries potential from the world’s oceans has probably been reached” (quoted in the New York Times). So, to give fisheries time to re-grow depleted populations of bluefin tuna, shark, Chilean sea bass, cod, and others, start buying lesser-known fish, like wild sardines or anchovies.
Buy wild fish, or catch it yourself. The aquaculture industry is feeding fish to fish, and it’s an inefficient industry. It takes five kilograms of smaller fish to produce one kilogram of farmed cod, and 20 kilogram of smaller fish to produce one kilogram of tuna. Not to mention that farmed fish hurts the surrounding water and doesn’t taste as good.
Support catch shares. Shares that allow fishermen to buy into an industry and the right to catch a sustainable harvest keeps the number of fish caught at a fixed number and has worked in Alaska.
For more info on fish, see the posts on sustainable sushi, seafood, and salmon.

Photo from Green Peace.

Sustainable Sushi Guide

scleaver — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

If sushi might be on your menu this weekend, consider downloading a sustainable sushi guide to bring along with you. We’ve covered sustainable fish guides, but there’s a new guide out this month, and the guides in general are a wonderful, useful way to eat sustainably wherever you are. (To read what we’ve covered, here are past blog posts about mercury dangers and sustainable seafood.)

Sushi restaurants are, apparently, behind the curve when it comes to serving sustainable options, unlike chefs who cook fish at general seafood restaurants, sushi chefs may not know where fish came from and whether it was farmed or caught. And, too many of us don’t even think about sustainability when choosing our maki rolls or platters and order plates and plates of over-fished or endangered fish. For example, right now, mackerel is in and octopus is out, according to the AP on MSNBC.com, while bluefin tuna is very, very out. Other fish to avoid: monkfish, freshwater eel,l and red snapper.

Download a guide from The Monterey Bay Aquarium or The Environmental Defense Fund to use this weekend.

Photo of a sushi bouquet from The New York Sushi Blog.

Seafood Delight

scleaver — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:16:42 -0400

For those of us who love a good sushi dinner or fried seafood platter, sustainable fishing is high on the list of sustainable farming practices to watch. Over at the Chocolate & Zucchini blog, fish were a hot topic this week. Apparently, because of overfishing, unsustainable fishing, overconsumption, and pollution, some fish species (including those that we like to eat) may be extinct by 2050.

How to address this?

Chocolate & Zucchini suggests becoming a more informed consumer—pick up a pocket seafood guide that you can refer to next time you sit down to dinner or stand in front of the fish counter. Here’s a regional guide from The Monterey Bay Aquarium.

I like the services from the Blue Ocean Institute. Find your favorite species to see sustainability and health concerns, or download a fish guide.

When you are shopping or dining out, don’t be afraid to ask questions, like, is this farmed? How was it caught? Where did this come from?

And, of course, the number one defense is a good offense, become better informed: Read more RiverWired posts about seafood and the environment: Sustainable seafood gained traction earlier this year, The Monterey Bay Aquarium is working to address seafood sustainability, and, earlier this year, Salmon were in trouble.

Photo from The Sydney Morning Herald about a wholesale fish market.

What You Eat Can Affect Global Warming, New Study Shows

scleaver — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

When it comes to global warming, what has a bigger impact: the meat we eat or all the driving we do?

Before you slice into that steak, consider this: how food is produced, not how far it’s transported is the main ingredient when it comes to global warming from food production, according to research released earlier this year. Christopher Weber and Scott Matthews, two researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, studied the greenhouse gases that were released during the growing and transportation of food in the U.S. They found that transportation accounts for 11% of food-related greenhouse gases, while how the food is grown, agriculture and industry practices—everything from methane and nitrous oxide emission from animals, fertilizers, and tractors—make up 83% of food’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Still, in the big picture, food is only part of the average household’s emissions each year. According to Erika Engelhaupt’s article in Environmental Science and Technology in April, food makes up 13% of total household emissions for the average family. Going locavore does have an impact, but not as much as you may think: given a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon for 12,000 miles each year, by eating local you’d reduce your emission by the equivalent of driving 1,000 miles less each year.

So, how to reduce emissions via your plate?

1. Change what’s on your plate. Once a week, instead of steak or cheeseburgers, have chicken or eggs for dinner. By replacing meat and dairy you’ll reduce the emissions equivalent to 760 miles of driving. Go vegetarian one day a week, and you’ll cut out an additional 1,160 mile-equivalents each year.

2. Reduce red meat in general. According to Weber, “there is more [total] greenhouse gas impact from methane and nitrous oxide than form all the carbon dioxide in the supply chain.” Cows burp methane, and their feed contains fertilizers that are eventually converted into nitrous oxide by bacteria.

3. Be picky about fish. If red meat was the big loser in greenhouse gas emissions, fish was a second-to-last finisher. In an ABC News report on meat and emissions in 2006 (Meat Eaters Aiding Global Warming?) fish was a dangerous choice because of all the energy it takes to catch.

4. A vegetarian diet is the most emissions-friendly. But, that doesn’t mean you’re carbon-free. In the produce aisle, try to avoid food that was brought in via airplane, as those are known for high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

Photo from Treehugger op-ed on food miles and fair trade.

Want to learn more about global warming?

Top 10 Lesser-Known Myths About Global Warming

New Report: Doubts Grow About Global Warming

Send an Instant Message, Fight Global Warming

Top 10 Ways to Prevent Global Warming

Global Warming Cartoons

Jared Leto Pushes Back on Global Warming

Clean, Renewable Energy: The Answer to Global Warming

Where Have All the Salmon Gone?

scleaver — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:00:00 -0400

The March 17, 2008 New York Times article Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace reveals the challenges of managing a wild food supply.Chinook salmon (wild king salmon) are born in the Sacramento River, swim to the ocean where they grow into adulthood, and, after three years, come back to the place they were born to spawn. (At which point, they die and their body gives off nutrients that feed the next generation of fish.) As a species, the Chinook had been on the upswing. But this year, to the confusion and frustration of fishermen, they’ve disappeared. Investigations take us back to 2005, the year that those fish were born and swam from their birthplace in the river into the ocean. There are a variety of theories as to why the salmon never made it out to sea: the Sacramento River was badly managed that year so the fish were killed as they made their way to the ocean, picked up by prey or stuck in a drainage pipe that takes water from the river to farms; or, 2005 was a bad year for the ocean, changes in currents meant that there were no nutrients in the water so as soon as the fish arrived, they started dying. We may never know the exact reason that the Chinook salmon has disappeared this year. But, moving into fishing season, we do know that the fisheries along the Sacramento River will be closed, which means no fishing from the Mexican border through northern Oregon. That’s a huge, $150 million business. We may catch some Chinook when the Alaskan season starts in July, but prices will be high this year (not to mention that fishermen are currently out of a livelihood). In the aftermath, we’ll have to investigate how we handle a natural system so we don’t lose more Chinook salmon in the future. And, as World Changing points out: the salmon have a huge effect on the local ecosystem. “At least 137 different species—from grizzly bear to gray wolves—depend on salmon for part of their diet,” Alex Steffen wrote in his post Seeing Through Salmon. This, then, will be something that we’ll be watching throughout the year and into 2011 when the fish that should have been born this year, spent three years in the ocean, and come back, won’t be around to spawn.

Chinook salmon image from Salmon Nation.