“MSC-only policies are unfairly hurting American jobs and consumers,” said Greg Gabriel, Executive Director of the Northwest & Alaska Seiners Association. “Alaska has proven time and time again that our fisheries have been sustainable long before MSC, and retailers should be proud to provide sustainable Alaska salmon to its customers.” more@prnewswire 10:55
NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?
While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here
The MSC is committed to its partnership with Alaska
MSC respects and has worked well for more than a decade with Alaska fisheries, processors and others in the Alaska seafood industry and hopes to continue forward in a mutually supportive relationship, as it does with other industry and industry marketing bodies across the globe. For Alaska salmon and other MSC certified fisheries the MSC provides added value, including full traceability from landing site to point of sale, that does not compete with but complements and strengthens their marketing and branding. MSC is designed to positively motivate and work with fisheries and has not and does not disparage fisheries, MSC certified or not. Find out more here http://www.msc.org/documents/msc-factsheets/fact-sheet-about-the-msc-program-october-2013/view
There was a time when I believed in the MSC label and the propaganda for which it stands. Sadly those days are over for many people (myself included). What started out as a pretty good idea to differentiate fisheries with a poor record of sustainable management and poor fishing practices from the rest has gone completely astray. Fishermen and fisheries managers are held to impossible standards of environmental impact by the donors of organizations like MSC. Standards that could never be achieved by any other type of food producer. Farming, raising animals, even gardening all completely destroy wild habitat, farming is converting our planets rain forests and wild places into GMO crop lands with enough chemicals present that not even the birds and the bees can survive. Yet organizations like MSC will not certify fishermen whose only crime is being unable to afford to pay enormous sums because they aren’t greedy and wealthy like MSC’s donors.
Walmart is the perfect example of an organization whose profits from the destruction of our planet go to fund the MSC. Having to listen to the likes of WalMart preaching about sustainability as their Chinese factories fill the sky with coal fired carbon emissions 60 percent of which end up directly in the ocean damaging our eco-system and the health and suatainability of fish stocks world wide because they give a tiny amount of their gross profits to the MSC and other supposedly “eco-friendly” organizations is the worst side effect of this entire failed premise.
Fishermen remove carbon from the ocean and feed people with it. MSC exists on generous donations from the folks who put it there.