A timeley liece from acroos the pond by:
Roy P. Director at World Aquaculture Society Today
"a breakthrough in USA regarding sustainability"
A Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing convened by Sen. Mark Begich significantly moved the ball on seafood sustainability certification issues. First, the GSA will remove all references to 3rd party certification for US government seafood purchases, and will rely on NOAA. Second, Wal-Mat and Sodexo both pledged to work with ASMI and the RFM certification, and publicly supported the Alaska salmon industry withdrawal from MSC.
Finally, NFI's John Connelly made the point that NOAA must dramatically beef up its communications about the success of US fisheries - so corporate buyers recognize how sustainable we are.
Now whilst this is not about Aquaculture it is about what has been driving the NGO stranglehold on sustainability
If you go to http://www.seafoodnews.com/ you will see up top on left the Daily Video from John Sackton -you should pass this on to Consumer NZ as Sackton clearly argues that we have three major messages backed by science and the experience of the past 20 years: 1) US (read NZ/Aust etc...) seafood is not overfished, 2) Seafood is the most ecologically healthy and sustainable protein, and 3) threats to future marine protein sustainability do not come from overfishing as much as other environmental sources - such as carbon pollution. We need corporate buyers to understand these points.
These are the compelling points I have been pushing for a while - time for Governments to step up to the plate and back their science and industry and for industry to continue their progress on improvements in every area
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Check out the coomments and feedback on the above article which include this:
Director at World Aquaculture SocietyGood comments Ed
There were issues, things needed to be done and now we are moving on. What is important is that we move on without the restrictions and costs associated with the current approaches.
Things are clearly not assisted when WWF and MSC put out videos like thishttp://www.adforum.com/top5/worldwide/356/34489995 - not for the first time I would add.
That is why they need to move on - they clearly cannot control elements within their organisation and there is a sense of arrogance.
Mind you if I was in their position and earning great money I would not want to give up my job nd I would keep throwing in issues on why they should still be around - they will hang in there, making out they are important, adding costs and extra burden to the industry instead of doing the right thing and realising that their job is done, they 'done well' and its time to move on.
Supermarket chains are starting to realise this (WalMart and M
