Progressive Wednesday

One Fish, Twelve Fish, Good Fish, Bad Fish.

Food & Water Watch, a socially and economically progressive non-profit organization, just recently came out with their 2010 National Smart Seafood Guide. It’s an eye-opener.

First, here’s a little more about Food & Water Watch and why this guide is legit and significant. Food & Water Watch’s goal is to ensure that our food, water, and fish are “safe, accessible and sustainable.” Common sense policies designed for the public good, not for private gain, are at the heart of what drives this organization. It is interested not only in safety, but also in the economic viability of family farmers. To read more about them, click this sentence.

This year’s National Smart Seafood Guide will probably change the way you eat (in good ways, both for you and for small fisheries). To create the guide, Food & Water Watch “analyzed over 100 different fish and shellfish to create the only guide assessing not only the human health and environmental impacts of eating certain seafood, but also the socio-economic impacts on coastal and fishing communities.”

You can peruse the guide by fishing region or by general categories of fish.

But there’s an alarming section of the guide as well. Food & Water Watch calls this list “The Dirty Dozen,” and it includes seafood to be avoided completely because each of them fails multiple criteria used by the organization to evaluate fish.

Editor’s Note: This list is in alphabetical order. This is not a ranking.

• American eel (a.k.a. yellow or silver eel). Why? They are jacked to the max with concentrations of mercury and PCBs.
• Atlantic bluefin tuna. Why? They are chocked full of mercury and PCBs. They are overfished and are reaching levels that would categorize them as facing extinction. They are listed as “critically endangered.”
• Atlantic cod. Why? This is an incredibly overfished fish, and it appears on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. As if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, they are fished using bottom trawls, which can destroy seafloors for other animals.
• Atlantic flatfish (a.k.a. flounder, sole, halibut). Why? They are overfished beyond belief, and their fishing results in a high level of bycatch, despite efforts to reduce it.
• Atlantic and farmed salmon. Why? The farmed variety can have high levels of PCBs, pesticides, and antibiotics. The method of raising farmed salmon creates an environment where diseases can flow from the farm into the wild. Editor’s Note: Farmed salmon is usually labeled “Atlantic salmon.” Fishing wild Atlantic salmon in the U.S. is banned because the fish is facing extinction.
• Caviar. Why? Sturgeon, the fish responsible for the “highest quality” of caviar (I put that in quotes because I think it’s all pretty foul) are overfished because of their slow maturation and impressive lifespan (most will outlive you and me, that is, if we don’t make them extinct).
• Chilean sea bass. Why? Mercury, for one. Illegal fishing, for two. Fishing that has killed several species of endangered birds, for three.
• Imported catfish. Why? Because of how poorly regulated Southeast Asian fish is (both in terms of chemicals and antibiotics), and because the FDA only inspects less than two percent of imported fish.
• Imported King Crab. Why? This one is seriously messed up. Okay, so, even though many of these crabs live in U.S. waters, the U.S. imports a great deal of crab. Why? Get this…. Exporters will sell crab caught in the U.S. to other countries where it can fetch more money, and then we import cheaper crab. Much of this imported crab is caught illegally. (I wrote it before I’ll write it again: less than two percent of imported fish is inspected by the FDA.)
• Imported shrimp. Why? 90 percent of shrimp eaten in the U.S. (I should note that it is the most eaten seafood in the U.S.) is imported (there’s that pesky two percent inspected, again), and those countries exporting to us have poorly regulated working and production conditions.
• Orange roughy. Why? First, they can contain high levels of mercury. Second, they are overfished.
• Shark. Why? I feel like a broken record (or MP3): mercury levels in shark can pose a serious health risk.

Am I saying you shouldn’t eat fish? No. Is Food & Water Watch saying you shouldn’t eat fish? No. In fact, their guidebook will help you pick healthy, safe, and sustainable seafood.