Again? Really, when has it ever been a good idea to support the tuna
industry?
Quoting MalcolmB <malcolmb2@comcast.net>:
> (Huffington Post)
>
> Time to Boycott Tuna Again?
> By MARK BITTMAN
>
> Mark Bittman on food and all things related.
> TAGS:
>
> BOYCOTTS, CANNED TUNA, DOLPHINS, TUNA FISHING
> I wish I'd been in La Jolla a couple of weeks ago to see the green
> inflatable airship flying overhead with a cartoon mermaid on one
> side. She was curvy and blonde, with a cigarette in her mouth and a
> bloody fish impaled on her trident. Around her was text that read,
> "Chicken of the Sea: Carnage in a Tuna Can."
>
> Are we looking at another tuna boycott? Many readers will remember
> 1988, when biologist Sam LaBudde went to work as a cook on a
> Panamanian tuna boat and secretly shot film that showed dolphins
> dying in nets and being crushed in winches, as many as 20 for every
> tuna. The video was shown to a Senate subcommittee and sparked a
> consumer boycott of canned tuna. Two years later, Starkist — then
> owned by Heinz — announced it would no longer buy any tuna caught by
> methods that threatened dolphins. Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea
> quickly followed suit, and "dolphin-safe tuna" was born. (Strangely
> enough, the World Trade Organization just ruled against dolphin-safe
> tuna labels, but that's another story.)
>
> Canned tuna was then the most popular fish in America; it's been
> replaced by shrimp, but we still eat a billion dollars' worth a
> year. And Greenpeace USA — creators of the flying, cigarette-smoking
> mermaid — has launched a campaign to reform the canned tuna
> industry. Indications are it will succeed, because its demands have
> already been met in the U.K. But if it doesn't, a boycott may be in
> order, and one member of Congress has already called for one.
>
> The day after the flying mermaid's voyage, the environmental
> organization delivered a 700-page petition to San Diego-based
> Chicken of the Sea imploring the company to abandon fishing
> practices that maximize bycatch — the "accidental" catch of
> non-targeted fish — and deplete dwindling stocks.
>
> Much canned tuna is skipjack, and much of that is caught using fish
> aggregating devices (F.A.D.'s), purse seine nets and longlines. An
> F.A.D. is simply a buoy, or even a log (really, it can be almost
> anything that floats), cast by a boat into the water. Small fish
> find them and use them as shelter from larger fish; the larger fish
> then come to hunt, and soon enough the F.A.D. is at the center of a
> small, dense ecosystem.
>
> Most F.A.D.'s are equipped with radio beacons that relay their
> position back to the boats; some also have biomass sensors to
> indicate how many fish are in the neighborhood. When a boat believes
> that the fish population around an F.A.D. has reached a substantial
> mass, it comes back with massive purse seine nets, scooping up the
> entire surrounding ecosystem. And although skipjack is the target,
> the nets pull in sharks, billfish like sword and marlin, and young
> yellowfin and bigeye tuna, which often comprise as much as 20
> percent of the total catch. (Need I point out that killing young
> fish cripples future stocks?)
>
> Longlines, which are often used for albacore tuna — also canned —
> are similarly indiscriminate. Miles of line stretch from buoy to
> buoy with baited hooks hanging down every few yards. (Stop for a
> moment and imagine what "miles of line" look like.) Turtles get
> snagged on the hooks and can't return to the surface to breathe.
> Seabirds think the hooks are fish, dive down, and get caught. And
> again, the bycatch is tremendous. (Industry-wide, the bycatch of
> industrial fishing is as high as 25 percent.)
>
> All of this, says Greenpeace's Casson Trenor, one of the central
> figures of the tuna campaign, is bad enough, but the group would
> also like to see a ban on fishing in what are know as "high seas
> pockets," four areas of ocean just beyond the territorial waters of
> a handful of Pacific island nations. Because these waters don't
> belong to any particular state, tuna boats — often from wealthier
> nations like Spain, Taiwan and the United States — swarm in these
> pockets, operating without quotas, catch limits or access fees.
> Despite some regulations, the area is effectively lawless, and the
> largely tuna-based economies of those nearby Pacific islands take a
> huge hit as a result.
>
> Last week Congressman Eni Faleomavaega, the representative from
> American Samoa, welcomed Greenpeace and called for a full ban on
> F.A.D.'s and high-seas-pockets fishing, and asked Americans to
> refrain from buying any products from Chicken of the Sea or Bumble
> Bee. (Faleomavaega exempts Starkist because they have not, like the
> others, exported tuna cleaning jobs to Thailand; Greenpeace doesn't
> see Starkist as much different, but isn't actively calling for any
> boycott.)
>
> A boycott wasn't a necessary component of Greenpeace's recent
> victory in the U.K.: just months ago, the last major holdout — tuna
> giant John West — joined the rest of the big players in that canned
> tuna industry in a commitment to stop using F.A.D.'s with purse
> seine nets, and switch to pole and line fishing. Chicken of the Sea
> is owned by the same Thai parent company as John West. Clearly, if
> one major subsidiary can succumb to pressure and shift its
> practices, so can another.
>
> Meanwhile, Greenpeace is pouring on the pressure; Trenor is
> currently in the Pacific islands to film and potentially interfere
> with tuna boats using F.A.D.'s in one of the high-seas pockets,
> especially U.S.-flagged ships with proven links to Chicken of the Sea.
>
> "We're not against canned tuna," wrote Trenor in an e-mail.
> "Americans, like all consumers, deserve access to a supply of
> affordable and convenient protein. But we also deserve to know the
> truth behind the methods that are employed to produce it, and to
> make an informed choice as to whether we wish to support those
> methods. The bottom line is that the tuna companies can do things
> better."
>
> Sam LaBudde's dolphin video was the first of its kind, and in a
> pre-YouTube era. Now we seem immune: keep in mind that despite the
> fairly regular release of shocking livestock cruelty videos, we
> haven't seen any widespread boycotts of factory farmed meat. But if
> you think about it, the F.A.D. and purse seine strategy is just
> another form of animal confinement. It's not "farming," but it's
> industrial. And if Americans can be persuaded to change their buying
> habits to prevent one form of animal cruelty, there's hope for
> another.
>
> And it may take more than a damning video, a sinister mermaid blimp
> and a petition to shift the practices of the canned tuna industry;
> even a rogue crusader in Congress (representing an area of which
> most Americans are barely aware) might not make a dent.
>
> It's going to happen, though. The U.K. did it, and sooner or later
> so will the U.S. We made dolphins safe. Turtles, sharks, sea birds,
> young yellowfin and bigeye should be next. It's an easy fix, one
> that might not require a boycott. If it does, however, it'll be an
> easy one to support. And it will show us the way to what should come
> next.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
0 comments:
Post a Comment