The Sustainable Seafood Multi-Stakeholder Summit will be held in San Francisco at the Golden Gateway Holiday Inn on 20 and 21 October.
The event will feature speakers from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), among other groups working to achieve a global consensus on seafood sustainability. Harmonizing standards, certifications and traceability capabilities for sustainable seafood is the theme.
The program is designed to meet the interests of seafood retailers and buyers, not the providers of the certification programs themselves. It will enable participants to thrash out the areas of agreement and differences between the various solution providers and pave the way for reaching a common consensus on what sustainability actually means and how this can be clearly conveyed to the consumer.
Highlighted speakers include Jim Humphries, fisheries director for MSC’s Americas region; Neil Sims, co-founder and president of Kona Blue Water Farms in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii; Dr. Paolo Bray, director of Friend of the Sea; Jeffrey Silverstein, national aquaculture program leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service; Ian Roberts, communications manager for Marine Harvest Canada; Mark Helvey, assistant regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service; and Chuck Anderson, former VP of seafood procurement for Ahold USA.
Key questions at the summit include how the industry can collaborate on the harmonization of certification and traceability solutions; if the industry can define all the environmental impacts impacting the seafood sector, including carbon footprints in the supply chain, food miles and wastage; and how the industry can begin to develop a voluntary mission statement for sustainable seafood.
Other speakers at the event include Meredith Lopuch, deputy director of the WWF’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative; William More, VP of the Aquaculture Certification Council; Mike Crispino, communications manager for the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation; Bill Carvalho, president of Wild Planet Foods in McKinleyville, Calif.; Giovanni Comin, CEO of Central Coast Seafood in Atascadero, Calif.; Dick Nyeko, executive secretary of the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization; and J. Miguel Medialdea, quality and environment manager for Veta la Palma fish farm, Pesquerias Isla Mayor SA, among others.
The event is produced by American Business Conferences.
