4 Surprising Places You Can Buy Sustainable Fish

A dangerous path

This installment of my monthly Alternet column, “4 Oceans,” was originally published on April 26, 2011.

Even as the plight of our oceans worsens, a large sector of the seafood industry continues to defend the status quo. Issues of grave concern like overfishing, bottom trawling, and piracy are swept under the carpet time and time again by the same tired argument: “sustainable seafood is too expensive.”

This adage comes in many forms. “Sustainability is just for the rich,” is a common one. Or maybe the scoundrels go for the jugular with pseudo-patriotic poppycock like “real Americans can’t afford to eat sustainable fish.” This scare tactic is designed to end the conversation so conventional industry can get back to slinging the same ill-gotten plunder that’s gotten us to this point of ailing seas and depleted fish stocks.

The fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, it’s not sustainable seafood that’s too expensive – rather, it is unsustainable seafood, with all of its associated externalities, subsidies, and Faustian bargains that is out of our price range. It’s time to put this argument where it belongs: in the past.

This month’s 4 Oceans highlights several stores priced for mainstream America that are leading the charge on sustainable seafood in conventional retail. If these guys can do it, anyone can.

1) Safeway

It may come as a shock, but the 1700+ Safeway stores across the country are on track to become a powerful force for ocean conservation. According to Greenpeace’s most recent seafood retailer ranking, Safeway has the most sustainable seafood operation of any major market in the United States. With a score of 6.5 out of 10, Safeway has a long way to go yet, but has still managed to outperform stores like Whole Foods that are generally assumed to be more able to provide sustainable options thanks to more affluent clientele.

Safeway has recently discontinued some particularly unsustainable seafood items (like orange roughy) and is providing thorough in-store information about their commitment to sustainability. The company has also spoken out publicly in favor of global conservation efforts; their recent shout-out supporting Ross Sea protection is an excellent example of how mainstream retailers are rounding the horn on seafood sustainability and foraying into the highly political – and critically important – arena of marine reserve establishment.

Do the right thing

2) Target

The big-box retail titan from Minnesota tied for the #2 spot in this year’s rankings with Wegmans (a progressive high-end grocer that has also done some extremely impressive work on seafood sustainability).  This is actually a slight step down for Target – the company took the top spot in last year’s rankings, largely because of its willingness to tackle Matterhorn-like challenges that other companies refuse to even consider. A prime example is Target’s decision to discontinue all forms of farmed salmon throughout their entire operation. This initiative has greatly deflated conventional industry “farmed salmon is necessary because people want inexpensive salmon” fear-mongering.

Target has also evolved beyond the sale of unsustainable mainstays like Chilean sea bass, and continuing to press forward along other avenues of seafood sustainability. It’s true that Target doesn’t sell a great deal of seafood when compared to many other nationwide retailers, but this kind of progress still goes to show that even big-box discounters can do great things for environmental preservation when they commit to it.

3) Harris Teeter

The growing consumer demand for sustainable seafood is not only found in the leftist enclaves of Northern California or among patrons of trendy, feel-good East Village restaurants. The sustainable seafood movement is making headway all across the country, and in the American South, this has been spearheaded by the remarkable efforts of Harris Teeter, a household-name grocery store that has dominated much of the retail sector in Georgia and the Carolinas for decades. Even though Harris Teeter competes directly with price-focused grocers such as Food Lion and Walmart, the company has taken an aggressive approach to seafood sustainability and is becoming an undeniable leader in the sector.

Over the past couple of years, Harris Teeter has discontinued orange roughy, augmented their sourcing policy to take key environmental issues (such as pirate fishing) into account during purchasing, and created a comprehensive seafood information clearinghouse within their website to enable their customers to learn more about all of the various seafood options available at Harris Teeter. The company is currently #6 in Greenpeace’s retailer ranking, but with a score of 5.8/10 is less than three-quarters-of-a-point behind the current #1 (Safeway).

Lifting the veil

4) Aldi

Aldi’s no-nonsense approach to discount retail has earned the company appeal in the eyes of many bargain hunters across the Midwest. Still, it doesn’t often figure as a top destination for seafood shoppers… but maybe it should.Aldi doesn’t sell a tremendous amount of seafood, but for such a small category, Aldi’s seafood gets an impressive amount of attention and dedication from company leadership. Aldi has leapt up Greenpeace’s retailer rankings for the second year in a row, moving from a 1.9 out of ten in 2009, to a 3.9/10 in 2010, and now to a 5.5/10 this year (which has earned the company seventh place overall in the 2011 rankings).

Aldi sells no farmed salmon, has already eliminated the worst of its unsustainable species (like orange roughy), and currently offers only seven red list items (where most markets average around 12 or 13). The company also provides a substantial amount of information to consumers through comprehensive seafood labeling practices. Interested customers can discern where any given Aldi seafood product was caught (FAO catch area), the precise species in question (latin name), and the method used in capturing the fish (gear type indications) just by looking at the label. It’s refreshing to see a discount retailer selling fish without obfuscating it under market monikers; hopefully this is a trend that will continue as seafood sustainability continues to enter the mainstream.

Tags: 4 Oceans, aldi, alternet, carting away the oceans, cato, cato v, greenpeace, harris teeter, orange roughy, safeway, target

A tough week

It’s a bad time to be an ocean-dweller.

Nets of doom

First, we have the overfishing crisis, which continues virtually unabated. Every day, we yank hundreds of thousands of pounds of life out of the sea, often in strikingly inefficient and destructive ways – bottom trawls rake the floor of the ocean, pulverizing corals and flattening any animals that lack the locomotive capacity to evade them, while pelagic longlines indiscriminately slaughter curious seabirds, turtles, and sharks as collateral damage in our unrelenting quest for seafood.

To make matters worse, President Obama, who was elected in part by an engaged and hopeful environmentalist demographic, has completely turned his back on the oceans and their largest denizens – whales. His 2008 promise to strengthen the international moratorium on commercial whaling has been completely subsumed by an insidious new agenda that seeks to dismantle the moratorium, legalize whaling in the Southern Ocean (including Japan’s ongoing hunt for endangered fin, sei, and humpback whales), and create an unspoken tolerance among the world’s governments for this intolerable activity.

Nice work, slick

And above it all, offshore drilling has finally revealed itself as exactly what we have always feared it would be – an inevitable environmental cataclysm. The ruptured Deepwater Horizon pipeline continues to release untold amounts of toxic crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, strangling birds, fish, and any other life forms unfortunate enough to be caught within its suffocating expanse… which is currently the size of the State of Delaware, not to mention up to 45 feet deep in some areas.

Our oceans and their denizens are besieged on all sides. Given these seemingly insurmountable odds, it is difficult to maintain any sense of optimism when one considers the state of our world’s waters. Still, all is not lost. All three of the aforementioned menaces have sparked resistance, and with the right kind of passion and leadership, we just may find a way out of this mess after all.

Misleading labels: an endangered species

Although overfishing remains a tremendous problem, Greenpeace’s recent Carting Away the Oceans report highlights some significant progress: quite a few major retailers have taken strong steps towards the development of sustainable seafood operations. Companies like Target, Wegmans, Whole Foods, and Safeway are making positive sourcing decisions that reduce environmental degradation and enable their customers to shop with a more confidence. Even Trader Joe’s, which earned both ire and infamy last year for its indifference to sustainability in seafood, has turned a corner.  A recent announcement on the company’s website indicates that Trader Joe’s has discontinued orange roughy and is currently developing a sustainable seafood policy as well as more informative and transparent labeling. Beyond this, the company has called out the need for marine reserves in fishery management and has promised to use its purchasing dollars to support visionary leadership in industry (such as closed-containment salmon).  The work has only just begun, but it is comforting to know that this company, which was once an incorrigible laggard in these areas, may now be in the process of becoming a true leader.

Our government’s efforts to legalize whaling and reward Japan, Iceland, and Norway for their continual disregard of international law and the will of the vast majority of the Earth’s population seem to have hit a snag as well. Monica Medina, the lead US delegate to the International Whaling Commission and the champion of the legalization effort, seems to be backpedaling a bit in the face of enormous public resistance. Opposition to this despicable initiative is so vocal, in fact, that a petition urging Congress to reconsider has received over 100,000 signatures – and the number is growing every day.

Apply lessons learned... please

It’s not easy to find something positive to say about the horrific oil disaster in the Gulf, but maybe – just maybe – we can find a way to coax a silver lining out of this mess. One can surmise that if it is this difficult to repair oil drilling mishaps in an area as accessible and temperate as the Gulf of Mexico, it would be infinitely more challenging in the Arctic. And there will be mistakes in the Arctic. There will be spills, fires, and other accidents – they are inevitable to some degree, as we have so painfully learned. So perhaps our government will read the writing on the wall and reinstate a total moratorium on offshore drilling, including the new leases in the Arctic. While this won’t quell Deepwater’s hemorrhaging, save Louisiana’s shrimp industry, or clean the crude off of any brown pelicans, it would certainly be a massive positive step towards precluding even more – and even worse – nightmares like this from occurring in the future. Even California’s Governor Schwarzenegger has heeded the harsh lessons of Deepwater Horizon and rescinded his support for a bill that would prompt new oil exploration off the coast of California. Now, I never thought I’d want Obama to take a page from the Governator’s book, but in this case, it seems like Schwarzenegger has the right idea.

Thank you

So yes, things look grim for our oceans, no doubt about it – but there is hope. There is always hope. Countless people are struggling against the crises facing our oceans, doing their utmost to heal this planet that we are ravaging so blindly. And it is those people, and their efforts, and the possibility of a better future for us and for our children that keeps hope alive. It is undoubtedly a bad week to be a fish, or a whale, or a turtle, or a Louisiana shrimper – but next week just might be a little better.

Tags: arctic, bottom trawl, bycatch, california, carting away the oceans, catastrophe, deepwater, drill, drilling, environment, fin, governator, gulf, horizon, humpback, longline, louisiana, medina, mexico, monica, moratorium, obama, oil spill, overfishing, oyster, safeway, schwarzenegger, seals, sei, shrimp, shrimper, slick, target, trader joe's, turtle, wegmans, whale, whales, whaling, whole foods