To be or not to be….organic
When you think of organic food, you probably think of healthy, sustainable, and environmentally friendly food, labeled with a whole lot of “free” adjectives –– pesticide-free, chemical-free, hormone-free…you get the idea. But do you think of fish as organic?
This week, the National Organics Standards Board (NOSB) –– a part of the United States Department of Agriculture –– will recommend allowing fish raised in aquaculture operations (otherwise known as fish farms) to be certified as organic and to carry the official USDA organic label. Specifically, the board will consider allowing the use of fishmeal from wild fish and open–net pens for fish raised in aquaculture facilities.
What does this mean for consumers? Well, it means that fish you eat from aquaculture facilities could be bad for your health and bad for the environment. Aquaculture feed is comprised of fishmeal and oil from wild fish, and commonly contains PCBs, dioxin, mercury, and other pollutants that are hazardous to human health. And, raising fish in open–net pens promotes pollution from fish waste, and can spread disease and parasites to wild fish populations.
Does this sound organic to you? Judging from this guy's reaction, we'd say not.
Currently, the U.S. government wants to expand aquaculture into the open ocean (3 to 200 miles from shore), and have even more fish raised in environmentally unsustainable conditions. However, while the federal government has spent millions of dollars
funding offshore aquaculture research and demonstration projects on
both U.S. coasts and in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the commercial
viability of the fledgling industry has yet to be proven. Check out our new report Fishy Farms, The Problems with Open Ocean Aquaculture, which discusses this in more detail, and talks about how these commercial–scale fish farms will fail to meet basic organic criteria.
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grocery stores
Oceana, a conservation group, is trying to get major grocery companies to post this government advice at their seafood counters. Thanks, in part to their work, Whole Foods, Safeway stores, and Wild Oats voluntarily agreed to post the FDA’s recommendations and they have had positive responses from customers and no loss in seafood sales. But other companies like Costco and Giant Eagle have refused to do so. Oceana has a list of which companies care about their customers’ health enough to post this advice, as well as a list of companies that don’t. You can get the Green List and Red List at <a href="http://www.oceana.org/greenlist"> their website. </a>