Does Your Fish Have An Eco-Label?

March 2, 2009

Flickr Photo by Harvard Avenue

When I became a vegetarian in 2001, I knew that I wanted to keep some seafood in my diet, but only that which was sustainably harvested.

From that point forward, I vowed that I would not eat any fish or seafood that was being harvested to extinction, harvested in a way that damaged habitat, or full of poisonous chemicals.

With so little information available in restaurants and supermarkets, I just didn’t eat any fish for about a year and a half!

Seafood Guides

My salvation came in the form of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch project, which publishes handy regional pocket guides that list fish in easy-to-understand Green, Yellow and Red categories.

Every time I sent a waiter back to the kitchen to ask about the fish on the menu, I knew I had done my part, even if he didn’t come back with the answer I wanted to hear. Management was starting see that there was a demand for sustainable seafood.

Note for the nerd herd: you can now download the Seafood Guide for your iPhone!

New Eco-Label for Wild Seafood

While I felt like I was earning extra brownie points for whipping out my seafood guide in stores, it is still requires extra effort.  Why can’t this information just be on the label?

Well, my wish has come true. The Seafood Watch project just announced a new label system for wild fish from the Marine Stewardship Council:

When it comes to seafood, the bright blue eco-label of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has been an important part of European seafood shoppers’ experience for years – and it’s growing in recognition here in the United States. Consumers like you can feel confident that this label is the most credible sustainable seafood eco-label in the marketplace today.

Right now this label only applies to seafood that comes from wild fisheries — which is the best source for predatory fish like salmon. (Did you know that it takes three pounds of wild fish to grow one pound of farmed salmon?)

Farmed Seafood is Next

But what about other fish that do well in aquaculture?

Lee and I have become quite fond of Tilapia, which is a good choice for farmed fish because they provide more protein than it takes to raise them. But we know to avoid Tilapia that comes from China and Taiwan, where pollution and weak management are common.

When will there be a label for farmed fish? Soon, we hope. The World Wildlife Fund, which co-founded the MSC, recently announced it plans to develop a similar Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) for farm-raised seafood.

Posted in Eat, Think