Sustainable Seafood

Fast Company: Whole Foods Implement Seafood Color-Coded Rating System

This article talks about the new initiative Whole Foods has rolled out: labeling all of their seafood with sustainability ratings, with plans to phase out their "red-listed" or unsustainably harvested seafood by 2012.

 It is also an excellent example of the company taking responsibility instead of the consumer: it is possible to find out which kinds of fish in your area are or aren't sustainable or overfished, but its even easier for the company to research and educate their customer base about these kinds of issues, and then use thier pwer to negotiate with suppliers and eventually, lower the demand for these products.

This is something I would love to see implemented everywhere. At the moment, I only know of a few kinds of fish that are sustainable: farm-raised rainbow trout or catfish, which are both breeds that have low food conversion ratios and do well in inland pond environments, and Alaskan salmon and Nova Scotian lobster, both of which are well-managed and regulated industries.

Fortunately, a quick google takes me to the Monterey Bay Aqaurium website, which has a not only information on the issue of sustainable seafood, but also a set of pocket guides available to print out, varying by region of the United States, with the same rating scale that they developed for Whole Foods. Print one out and take it with you shopping!

*for anyone who needs ideas and article to write about, check out Fast Company's website and click the "Ethonomics" tab. A whole section devoted to sustainable and ethical articles!