Who's having the Frankenfish?
Monday,27 September,2010 08:37:06
I have been known, in moments of sheer desperation, to gag down farmed salmon.
But I can’t imagine eating genetically engineered salmon.
It’s not so much that I am preoccupied with allergic reactions and other unpleasant side effects, although these are prospects that certainly require further research.
I can’t imagine eating so-called GE salmon because I am opposed to raising them. Growers can take all the precautions they want, but as a practical matter they cannot prevent some level of escape. Commingling of mutant fish with wild native stocks could very well threaten the latter with extinction.
Additionally, AquaBounty Technologies, the company proposing the production of GE salmon, does not intend to label the fish as such, and under current FDA rules the company most likely won’t have to.
This is where the “Frankenfish” back-draft will hit the wild salmon producers from the get-go. There is without question a sizable segment of the public that will want nothing to do with GE salmon. Once these folks realize they have no way of identifying genetically engineered salmon, they’re likely to avoid salmon altogether.
Thank you for your time.
Jerry Fraser
Editor & Publisher, National Fisherman
www.nationalfisherman.com
NOAA has the way, but not the will
Monday,20 September,2010 08:49:07
NOAA has the authority to increase catch limits in response to an emergency, according to the Congressional Research Service.
That’s because the Magnuson-Stevens Act, for all it does define, never gets around to defining what constitutes an emergency.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) raised the issue with the CRS, which was chartered almost a century ago to provide research and analysis to lawmakers and their staffs.
The exchange came to our attention via a Web posting by the New Bedford, Mass.-based Project to Save Seafood and Ocean Resources.
“It appears possible,” the CRS said, “that action taken by the Secretary in response to an economic ‘emergency’ could likely withstand judicial review, so long as the Secretary’s determination that the conditions in question constituted an 'emergency' was a reasonable one.”
The CRS cites Section 305(c) of Magnuson-Stevens, which says that if “the Secretary finds that emergency exists… he may promulgate emergency regulations… necessary to address the emergency… without regard to whether a fishery management plan exists for such fishery,” and notes that the regional councils have similar authority.
Emergency regulations are effective 180 days and may be extended for 186 more, the CRS says.
Swords cut two ways and this one is no different. What NOAA can or should do is not what NOAA will or must do.If, under the auspices of Jane Lubchenco, the agency is at all sensitive to the economic emergency facing New England fishermen, it is news to me.
It’s much more likely that if NOAA is successful in New England — which is to say, if enough beleaguered fishermen can be forced out of the fishery — fishermen in other struggling regions of the country will find the shadow of NOAA’s crosshairs falling across their chests.
Thank you for your time.
Jerry Fraser
Editor & Publisher, National Fisherman
www.nationalfisherman.com
Basking in our legacy
Monday,13 September,2010 11:44:32
Maybe you get a little jaded after a while.
I say that because when I read that NOAA has designated basking sharks in the eastern North Pacific a “species of concern,” my first reaction was, “I wonder how they are going to hang this one on the fishing industry.” After all, Californians quit fishing them during the Eisenhower years and the Canadians got out of the racket in the 1970s.
I soon found out.
NOAA says the listing is necessary “because [the basking shark] has been overfished and its population has apparently not responded to conservation measures implemented to address fishing pressure.”
This is like blaming Louis XVI for the price of champagne.
There is no mention of possible environmental causes, even though climatic shifts such as the North Pacific has seen through the intervening decades have had demonstrably profound impacts on marine ecosystems.
Nor are we offered any stock assessment numbers, although NOAA is launching a Web site on which sightings may be logged. Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans says the basking sharks have “virtually disappeared.”
However, while NOAA says that sightings of thousands of basking sharks at a time were once commonplace, DFO estimates are much more modest, offering a minimum historical population of between 750 and a few thousand critters.
The DFO also notes “recent evidence that basking sharks may also use deepwater habitats greater than 1,000 meters,” which could explain the lack of interaction with whale watch vessels.
In any event, my point is not to take issue with concerns about basking sharks but to underline the need for data, as opposed to conjecture and “we haven’t see ’em around lately.”
And we certainly object to the reflexive attribution of blame to commercial fishing a half century or more ago.
Jaded? Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Thank you for your time.
Jerry Fraser
Editor & Publisher, National Fisherman
www.nationalfisherman.com
All SeafoodSource blogs >Frankenfoodie
Thursday,2 September,2010 08:17:06
Here’s what we’re up against, straight from the pages (or at least the Web site) of Time magazine:
“Farmed salmon is never as good as wild salmon,” writes Josh Ozersky, in a piece entitled, How I Learned to Love Farmed Fish. “Everybody knows that. The taste is duller, the flesh flabbier, the finish forgettable. If I could, I would only eat wild salmon. But I can't in good conscience, any more than I can keep eating wild bluefin tuna.”
Ozersky’s conscience may be overworked, but the area of his brain devoted to intellectual curiosity must be quite well rested.
How else would he come to believe that there are sustainability issues related to human consumption of wild salmon? For the record, Alaska salmon is one of only three wild harvested species to earn the designation “best of the best” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “super green” list. (The other two are hook-caught albacore and Pacific sardines.)
The vast majority of wild salmon consumed by Americans is Alaskan.
Granted, salmon runs along the West Coast are facing real challenges. However, the stocks are closely monitored and quotas are low enough that fishing doesn’t threaten to make things worse.
And don’t lump the Fraser in with other western rivers: The sockeye run there eclipsed 34 million this week, the strongest in a century.
I was doubly disappointed to learn that Ozersky is a food writer, a group that I have found more likely than the rank and file of reporters to consider sustainability on a case-by-case basis.
Ironically, given his apparent disdain for research, Ozersky in the same essay criticizes as “lazy” and “unimaginative” the use of the term “Frankenfish” to describe genetically modified salmon.
But at least it is accurate.
Thank you for your time.
Jerry Fraser
Editor & Publisher, National Fisherman
www.nationalfisherman.com