Sushi Time. Sustainably.

Last night I went out for Sushi with friends and family. I used to restrict myself to the vegetarian selections on the menu, but now I have other options. As soon as the menus came around, I pulled out my iPhone, accessed the Seafood Watch app, and selected their sustainable sushi guide. After explaining what I was doing to my dining companions, the conversation turned to the guide itself and what sushi on the menu was sustainable.

Much to our disappointment, few of the items on the menu merited the Seafood Watch "Best Choice" stamp of approval. In fact, the only best choice was the oyster tempura. We fared somewhat better on the "Good Alternatives" with surf clam sashimi (atlantic clams); and since king crab could be ruled out, we decided that the crab choices were also either a best choice or good alternative. The eel, salmon, shrimp and scallop choices all were rated "Avoid", which didn't stop some of the diners from ordering them. (Although, I'd like to think they ordered less of their unsustainable choices in favour of the sea-friendlier ones.) "Imagine if we all had one of those guides and followed it. Sushi shops would be really challenged," said one diner. We all nodded our heads somberly.

Personally, it's my hope that sushi-goers will get their hands on this guide and use it to ask their servers questions and guide their sushi choices. It's available as a wallet card, and iPhone and iPod touch app, and on the Web. If you order a wallet card, consider ordering a couple of dozen and giving them to your friends and favourite sushi restaurants.

Have you used a sustainable sushi guide at a restaurant? What was your experience? If you haven't used a sushi guide, would you?

Bye Bye Bluefin

Who'd have thought tuna could cause such a fuss? Scientists, environmentalists and politicians, of course. At issue in Europe this week is bluefin tuna, considered to be one of the most expensive and valuable sushi fish in the world. But the rise in popularity of sushi has taken its toll on bluefin tuna stocks. Since the 1970s, the population of Atlantic bluefin tuna has declined by as much as 90%. Bluefins are big fish and take a long time to mature. Increasingly, juvenile fishes are being caught before they have a chance to breed.

Environmentalists, including Japanese scientists, believe that overfishing is pushing bluefin tuna to extinction. One media story by ITV refers to the future of the bluefin as being 'as precarious as the Giant Panda," and some scientists believe that extinction may be as close as three years away unless firm action is taken now.

This week, the European Union (EU) executive commission urged member countries to agree to a temporary ban on bluefin catches until fish stocks recover. The United States is also calling for a ban. However, countries that regularly fish the bluefin have stalled the proposal. Japan is the main consumer of bluefin tuna and the Japanese are willing to pay a high price for the fish. Over 80% of bluefin tuna caught in the Atlantic and Mediterranean are exported there. Japan's own pacific bluefin is also overfished and there are calls to list both on the International endangered species list.

It really angers me that some politicians can't see beyond economy and politics to the bigger environmental issues. Yes, banning fishing on a lucrative export item has economic consequences, but the longer-term consequences (both environmental and economic) are more devastating. Have politicians learned nothing from the collapse of the cod fishery in the Canadian Grand Banks?

So what can we do as consumers?

• Don't consume bluefin tuna (also known as Kuromaguro, Atun de aleta azul, thon rouge)
• Order albacore tuna (shiro maguro) instead at sushi restaurants
• Encourage your local restaurant or fishmonger to purchase a sustainable alternative
• Support groups like Oceana and WWF who are lobbying for the fishing ban
• Write your minister asking Canada to support the ban

Links to other articles and videos on this topic:

• CTV news: EU fails to protect bluefin tuna
• CTV news: bluefin travel between Mexico and the Mediterranean
• New York Times: "The slaughter is happenning now"
• New York Times: A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish
• Huffington Post: Japan steps up efforts to save the bluefin

Mainstream Media Madness on Sustainable Food

The past few days have seen such a fabulous mix of really good food articles in the mainstream media, I feel I have little choice but to round them all up here (if only for my own sanity).

Fish and Seafood
Last week, the Vancouver Sun told us we "can and should eat fish." The article highlights Vancouver Aquarium seafood conservation program, Oceanwise, that rates local partners and restaurants on how sustainable their seafood choices are.

Closer to home, Monique Beaudoin at The Gazette checked out her local Provigo grocery store with Beth Hunter from Greenpeace Canada. The pickings were slim, but not impossible. Her associated blog post offers some tips to help you make sustainable seafood choices, as well as a YouTube video, FishVision Glasses.

Over at the New York Times, well-known food writer Mark Bitten explains why putting fish on the dinner table isn't as simple as it used to be, and shares some of his own dilemmas around buying fish. This article was one of my favourites this week. An associated post on his blog offers a link to the trailer for the documentary End of the Line, released earlier this week in the United kingdom, as well as a clip of Bittman in a radio interview on "The Takeaway"

Battle Against Big Agriculture
On Wednesday, the Life section of the print edition of the Globe and Mail offered its take on the documentary film Food, Inc., which arrives in Montreal and Toronto on June 19th. It also has a practical Q&A with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, about eating well, eating organic and eating local. The section also features a review of Quebec artisan cheese Blue Haze. I know what I'll be picking up at the cheese shop very soon!

Eating Local
How does locally-made pasta from locally-grown heritage grains sound? It sounded good enough for the Globe and Mail to include a story about it on Monday.

Montreal is not without local awesomeness as well. Stéphanie Bérubé at La Presse offers us 10 québecois products that local locavores should check out, from organic sausages to cider and miso and mushrooms. She follows this up with a list of 10 things a local gourmand must (absolutely) do (soon). I agree!

Phew! That's a lot for a few days. There were even more stories and articles that passed across my desk and twitter this week. I suspect a lot of the media madness has been due to World Ocean's Day on Monday as well as all the media work that is being done around the wider release of Food, Inc next week. Whatever the cause, it's been a busy week!

Making Sustainable Seafood Choices

I picked up Bottom Feeder by Taras Grescoe this week. It's a topic dear to my heart and a book I wish I'd written myself. A paragraph from the promo description of the book hits the proverbial nail on the head with the paradox that has become modern sea food production and comsumption:

"Just when opting for omega-3-rich seafood is being recognized as one of the healthiest dietary choices a person can make, the news seems to be full of stories about mercury-laden tuna, shrimp contaminated with antibiotics, and collapsing fish stocks. In a world of endangered cod, pirate-caught Chilean sea bass, and sea-lice-infested salmon, can we really continue to order the catch of the day in good conscience?"

I'm looking forward to reading a Canadian's (Montreal even!) perspective on the state of the world's fish and seafood. The last really good, and accessible, read I saw on this topic was The End of the Line (2006) by Charles Clover, the environment editor at The Daily Telegraph in the UK. In it, he examines fisheries industries worldwide, and how fish get from the ocean to our plates. It was an eye-opener, even for me who has covered scientific sessions on this topic. The book is now also available in french.

During my last trip to the UK in December 2008, I noticed a dramatic change in how fish was sold and marketed, compared to my previous visit only 18 months earlier. Information on sustainable seafood was everywhere: magazines, newspapers, and even featured on food reality shows. The fresh fish at the local supermarket, as well as a lot of the frozen choices, were clearly labelled with where and how the fish was caught. Even the UK Times' annual round-up of the top 10 fish and chip shops included consideration of the establishments' "committment to building a sustainable future for the industry by sourcing their fish from well-managed stocks" when producing their chippie ranking.

It's at time like these I feel that Canada is really quite backwards... or at least severely lagging behind the curve. So far as far as I can tell, President's Choice is the only big Canadian company to get into the sustainable seafood game. They have about half a dozen frozen products certified by the Marine Stewardship Council: tuna loins, black cod, salmon filets, smoked salmon, scallops. The much, much smaller Rainforest Trading also does sustainable canned tuna and salmon. It's also availble at some Loblaws.

To help Canadians make informed seafood choices, Seachoice has created a Canadian Seafood Guide. Monterey Bay Aquarium in the USA also produces information and guides through their Seafood Watch program. There guides are regional and there is one for the northeast USA that is especially pertinent to seafood in our area.