Curious what your fellow SeafoodSource readers are viewing? Here’s a rundown of the website’s five most-read stories and commentaries of April 2011:
5) China’s food-safety woes was one of the biggest food-related stories of 2007, and farmed seafood was commonly among the list of products identified as unsafe by the mainstream media. Four years later, China is still working to improve its food-safety record. But it’s making progress. The country is setting up of a network of food-safety offices in each province as well as a national food-safety risk assessment center. But demand-side certification may have already forced the hand of China’s export-focused seafood industry, reports SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Mark Godfrey in the 7 April story “Certification takes off in China.”
4) Tilman Fertitta isn’t messing around. Fresh off of last year’s acquisitions of The Oceanaire Seafood Room, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and Claim Jumper, the restaurant mogul — who also took Landry’s private in 2010 (he’s the company’s chairman, president and CEO) — is making a run at McCormick & Schmick’s. On 4 April, Fertitta offered to buy the 95-unit upscale seafood chain for more than USD 137 million. Then on 20 April, the McCormick & Schmick’s board unanimously rejected the bid, saying it “undervalues” the company. A day later, Fertitta, one of McCormick & Schmick’s largest shareholders, fired back, accusing the board of “acting in [its] own self interest.” The offer stands through the end of May. But expect this ordeal to take weeks, if not months, to play out.
Hungry for more? Check out James Wright’s profile on Fertitta, which ran in the January issue of SeaFood Business magazine.
3) In what will likely be the biggest seafood-related story of 2011, fears of radiation in Japanese seafood — the result of the nuclear power plant damaged by last month’s earthquake and tsunami — are spreading. On 5 April, SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Chris Loew, who’s based in Osaka, was one of the first to report that harmful levels of radioactive iodine were detected in a haul of sand lance caught off of Ibaraki Prefecture, adjacent to Fukushima Prefecture, where the impaired nuclear power plant is located. Though fishing for sand lance was suspended was there is no long-term hazard to human health, fears of radiation still exist, which is affecting demand for Japanese fish, explains SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Jason Holland in his 1 April commentary “Japanese seafood unhinged by contamination fears.”
2) The fifth edition of Greenpeace’s “Carting Away the Oceans” report, which ranks U.S. retailers according to their sustainable seafood sourcing policies, was released on 12 April. Love it or hate it, the report is still turning heads. “Safeway, Target top Greenpeace report” was this month’s second most-read story. This time around, 15 out of 20 retailers earned a passing grade, compared to just seven retailers last year. All 20 retailers received a failing grade in the inaugural edition of the report, published in June 2008.
The report also generated a lot of feedback from SeafoodSource readers. Check out the back-and-forth between National Fisheries Institute spokesperson and SeafoodSource blogger Gavin Gibbons and Greenpeace oceans campaigner John Hocevar. Or take a look at my 21 April commentary “Toothfish: The new sacrificial lamb?”
1) The most-read story of April was SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Mike Urch’s 11 April commentary “For pangasius, the squeeze is on.” In it, Urch details the fallout from a TV program that unfairly denigrated Vietnam’s pangasius industry. The show, titled “The Pangasius Lie,” aired in Germany last month. Urch also explains that sky-high production costs are forcing Vietnamese pangasius farmers out of business. Two weeks later, Urch interviewed Jose Villalon, managing director of the World Wildlife Fund-U.S. aquaculture program, about pangasius and the organization’s desire “to make sure that [aquaculture] is done right.”
For more on the saga, check out Melissa Wood’s feature on pangasius, which ran in the April issue of SeaFood Business magazine. Also this month, SeafoodSource hosted a webinar on the controversial draft rule transferring inspection of catfish — and potentially pangasius — from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The hour-long question-and-answer webinar, a recording of which is available to SeafoodSource premium members, featured attorneys Robert Hibbert and Karl Nobert of K&L Gates and Matt Fass of Maritime Products International.
