Eco-friendly Seafood

  Sustainable Fishery Advocates is a non-profit organization founded in 2002 to promote sustainable seafood. Their flagship project, FishWise, is a labeling system for grocery stores and direct marketers that uses color codes for availability and sustainability. As explained on their website www.fishwise.com, “Green means an item is readily available, hails from steady stocks and was caught or raised in a way that isn’t damaging to the environment. Yellow means there are some issues around the product and red means the species is either in danger of being depleted or is harvested in an environmentally unfriendly way.”
   The FishWise labeling system is catching on. Retailers who use the system report an increase in seafood sales with a decrease in sales for the redlined varieties. The labeling program, which began in California, is spreading to the East Coast. To learn more about sustainable fishing practices, which fish are more likely to have high mercury or PCBs, or to find out how to share information with your local retailer, check out the Sustainable Fishery Advocates website at www.fishwise.org.