PAST CAT ISSUES

We speak the good food language

Sustainable seafood history

The sustainable seafood movement began in the 1990s with a growing consciousness around the importance of protecting a source of wild food, good jobs, and healthy oceans.

The 1992 collapse of Canada’s Grand Banks cod fishery was a resounding wake-up call and one of the catalysts for the creation of the MSC. Almost overnight, more than 35,000 fishermen and plant workers from over 400 coastal communities lost their jobs when the cod fishery was closed indefinitely.

“This is what customers want,” Chef Castro notes. “We get visitors to the foodservice areas who will sit and relax and a fair number of employees to take a little time to sit down and eat, but more and more people are taking food out. We’ve had to make menu and packaging adjustments to make it easier for them while at the same time keep our space as sustainable as possible, with packaging that is recyclable or compostable.”

Sustainability

The idea of buying and serving local and sustainable foods has been around for so many years that it no longer qualifies as a trend so much as a way of doing business. But there is one idea still struggling to gain a secure foothold in the industry, and that is sustainable seafood. Groups like the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch and commodity boards such as the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute spend thousands of dollars each year communicating the message of safe seafood, and operators are beginning to take heed.