Tomato » Sustainability

The fish we can eat vs the fish we shouldn’t

Ed — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:26:40 +0000

Nothing is a simple as it seems. Even choosing to eat the humble fish is fraught with pitfalls.The Australian Marine Conservation Society ACMS recently introduced the Sustainable Fish Finder which if not complicating the matter certainly makes me feel bad about my eating habits.Around the world fish come by different names, some designed to hide their breed and origin. So if you are in the US or Australia and see Sea Bass on the menu you being offered the threatened Patagonian Toothfish and should avoid it.Good choices include blue grenadier, barramundi, blue-eye cod, bream, yellowfin tuna, flathead, king george whiting, mackerel, mullet, snapper and coral trout.We don’t agree with all the bad choices. For example, farmed salmon and trout are highlighted because they are fed wild caught fish and can escape. We reckon they are ok. The rule of thumb is to avoid deep sea fish, those that take a long time to reach maturity and ones caught on lines (which also tend to catch and drown the threatened Albatross)Now we feel a lot worse about eating that 50 year old coconut crab.

ShareThis

Coffee: If it doesn’t have the label it ain’t Fairtrade.

Ed — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 18:22:35 +0000

In the early 1990s things got really bad for coffee growers. Market prices rock-bottomed for the bean. It cost more to grow than the market would pay.Growers pulled their children out of school to work, forests were cleared to put in more coffee trees and labourers lost their jobs. That’s where The Fairtrade Foundation, a non-profit organisation set up in 1992 by groups including Oxfam, jumped in.The aim was to ensure that Third World farmers got a fair deal when trading with richer countries. (more…)

ShareThis

The consumer revolution arrives

Ed — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 16:12:17 +0000

This is a magazine that tries to do what so few do nowadays. ConsumerRevolution wants to aim high, not low reports adbusters and overthrough the mass produced revolution. We tried our own hand at something similar with Tomato about good, fresh local food and none of the pre-packaged horseshit that the big manufacturers are trying to push. A couple of advertisers recognised our audience but the purity of what we were trying to do had to be diluted. Consumerevolution takes potshots at Walmart. Its everyday prices come at the cost of the sustainability of products as well as producers. We are amazed by some of the companies listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices, including supermarket chains such as Sainsbury in the UK and Coles in Australia (to name but a few) which are notorious for using their market power against smaller producers.

ShareThis