Let me start by saying we are not opposed to efforts to educate people about seafood sustainability. In fact sustainable seafood is the life blood of our community. It's important for consumers to understand that responsible members of the seafood community are the true stewards of sustainability. And their work contributes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) assessment that in this country about 80% of the stocks are sustainably maintained.
What would you think if someone sent you a gift promoting a sushi pocket guide that was supposed to, among other things, help protect you from the perceived evils of things like mercury... but the gift itself featured a warning label that said it contained a chemical that might "cause cancer or birth defects?"
According to the Reuters blog that tracks and responds to reader reactions to mistakes, none of its 2,500 reporters have made a mistake that's been called too its attention in the last 6 days.
Wow, that's all I can say.
Here come the guides-- the Blue Ocean Institute, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have all launched sustainable sushi guides that not only conflict with red and green lists from other environmental lobbying groups but offer health advice too.
If they're talking about health advice for the oceans perhaps they've got a horse in this race but when it comes to human health I'll stick to doctors and dietitians.
It wasn't that long ago that NFI went head-to-head with the New York Times over its misuse of science and distortion of data in reporting about seafood.
"All of Thomson Reuters will also uphold the Reuters Trust Principles of integrity, independence and freedom from bias. This commitment is more than a source of pride. It is the core of who we are," that's from the Reuters code of ethics.
But this week when we asked Reuters to have a look at an article that we thought might just have violated its stated commitment to integrity we were greeted with deafening and defensive... silence.
There is no doubt the economic downturn is hurting everyone these days and apparently Greenpeace is no exception. Take a look below at a fundraising email that went out on Friday. Greenpeace is using an erroneous scare story that it concocted to goad supporters into forking over their hard earned money to help stem the tide of a crisis that it invented.
Wow, what can you say about PETA? The group whose leader famously said, "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it" is at it again. This time it's launched an anti-fishing campaign targeted at kids. And the content is nothing short of ridiculous.
Dr. Jane Hightower is a San Francisco physician who has been described in media reports as someone who's "made something of a cottage industry" out of anecdotally linking various and sometimes vague symptoms of illness to elevated mercury levels, that she suggests come from eating seafood.
The Alaska pollock fishery is not in danger of collapse.
The always measured and restrained folks at Greenpeace were at it again today. This time insisting they were right that overfishing has pushed Alaska Pollock to the brink of collapse. Not just the brink but the cusp... and we all know the cusp is much worse than the brink.
