I've never really been a big fan of seafood, but I do enjoy canned tuna. Whoever knew the consumption of a good old tuna sandwich should really be a guilty pleasure? Apparently, we've tuna-sandwiched ocean stocks of all but one species of tuna (the Skipjack) to critically low levels. Oops - sorry, guys. As if that weren't bad enough, the indiscriminate method used for catching most commercial tuna - dirty great big nets -results in the death of devastatingly large quantities of innocent marine bystanders such as turtles, dolphins and whales. Hmmm....might rethink that next tuna mornay. Luckily Greenpeace have generated a scale of the least to most offending canned tuna providores (and I found my favourite brand - Sirena - ranked as the naughtiest! oh no!). Check out the link below. Thanks to said Greenpeace website for the sad photo too.
If I'm not wrong, neither of the top two brands (Greenseas and Coles) are produced in Australia. The brand I used to buy, John West, was the most Aussie-friendly as far as I could tell from the research I did at the time. So now you have to choose between the more local or the more sustainable. It's not straightforward, is it?
ReplyDeleteThat may be so, I'm not sure. The point that the report made was that even the most sustainable brand on the scale - Greenseas - still uses indiscriminate large nets to catch the tuna, and therefore still isn't really all that environmentally friendly. As far as I know there isn't any tinned tuna available in Australia that can be eaten with a clean conscience. We've switched to John West Alaskan Salmon which has the Marine Stewardship Council seal of approval (none of the tuna does). But as you say, still got to consider the food miles here - can't win!
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