Friday, Aug 14, 2009 at 19:30
I did once lead a campaign by Aussie fishers to try and put an end to the longlining of Marlin, and the sale of marlin steaks.
In that campaign, I liaised with both the national seafood buyers for Coles and Woolies. They both allowed us to put a paper to them of all the reasons why they should NOT be supporting that particular fishery and how detrimental it is to icon species that tourists from the USA would pay big $ to come here and catch, if they weren't all in
supermarket freezers as marlin steaks.
We also pointed out the heavy metals and pesticides bio accumulation up the food chain and the dangers to pregnant women from consuming too much of that product and their public liability for deformed children etc.
To give them their due - they were more than willing to listen, and they did act and stop buying those products for their Australian stores (for a while).
The fact we threatened to bouycott their stores and blockade all their carparks driveways on a staurday morning with boats and trailers nationally, to point out all the shortcommings of the product to the press etc may have had something to do with that!
Whilst we won that round - we lost the overall battle - the wholesalers just sold the product to some other outlets was all. (i.e it didn't stop the wholesalers buying it from the longliners and hence the longliners from targetting marlin).
You have to get to all the public and get a real national consumer bouycott, if you wish to bring about real change.
You need to create a situation where, no one buys the product at all - it goes off on the shelf and the
supermarket has to throw it away at a loss.
Then they have to get the wholesalers to stop buying it from the fleet.
Once pro fishers can't sell it, they will stop deliberately targetting and catching it, and go catch something else.
This could be done with imported fish.
I just recently noticed a new fish
shop in our local
supermarket. They only sell Aussie fish. Yes it's very expensive - but what they do is package it in 2 person portions..cryovac sealed.
OK it might be horribly expensive BUT a couple nice pieces of fresh high quality eating local fish - enough for one meal for a couple might cost say $20, for 0.5 kilos.
Most restaurant meals portions servings are 250 grams of meat or fish each - thus half a kilos all you need to feed 2 people.
Spending $20 once a week for a decent piece of fish is far better than 20 bucks worth of Basa fillets from the mekong delta - the most polluted water way on earth, at the local fish and chip
shop, is far worse for your health.
It is possible to still eat local fresh caught fish of good quality.
Going out and buying a whole 20 kilo due fish however at $45 or so a kilo is cost prohibitive - but who really needs that much?
IF people were more selective and bouycotted the product we are talking about in nile perch fillets and basa fillets etc - the national
supermarket wholesale fish buyers, would then go look to stock something they could sell.
People could do a lot worse than to stand at the fish counter and say aloud so other customers can hear - "I'm not having any of that basa fillet - it comes from the most polluted waterway on earth - the Mekong Delta - proabably has dead human bodies & faeces floating past when it was caught, you could catch any number of awfull diseases from eating that", would start to get the message around especially if enough do it, and do it every week when you
shop.
Soon others would be heard proclaiming the same thing, and before you knew it - that fish would dissapear from the
supermarket shelves & be replaced by something else.
The supermarkets won't stock what they can't sell - it is ONLY consumer demand that keeps it there on the shelves.
If you want to effect change - come up with a plan that alters consumer demand.
In my experience it is the only thing that will work.
We have the fish - its all being exported and we are eating some other nations trash fish.
Time we changed that. Changing our buying habits could achieve that if enough people do it.
Cheers
AnswerID:
379013
Follow Up By: Member - ross m (WA) - Friday, Aug 14, 2009 at 21:19
Friday, Aug 14, 2009 at 21:19
The underlying problem is the worlds fishing stocks are shrinking ,either through over fishing or man made reasons such as pollution or climate change.
As soon as one species becomes scarce ,the fleets will switch to another or go further out to sea.
Northern fleets are now heading to the southern hemispere and soon it will be like the north
FollowupID:
646439