One of the great things about the Seafood industry in the USA is that it is very separate and fragmented compared to other food industries. However, that isolation and fragmentation have created a real problem for the seafood industry. Do you remember the "Beef. It's What's For Dinner" marketing campaign from 1992? That unified messaging of eating beef stopped a nearly 20-year slide in per capita beef consumption. The seafood industry could take some notes from this 22-year-old marketing campaign.
Now more than ever, the seafood industry would benefit from unified messaging to eat more seafood, not less. And that the popular narrative that fishing and fish farming are "destroying our oceans" is outdated and not contextually accurate. Language matters, and for far too long, the media has been able to recite needs to be more precise or out-of-context statistics. The seafood industry needs a unified voice to drive the message to eat more seafood, not less.
Take, for example, this Life Kit podcast by NPR. The Life Kit team uses language like: "The World Bank estimates that almost 90% of world fish stocks are overfished". There are plenty of other inaccurate or out-of-context statements, but this is the big one for me.
The truth is That that is an incomplete statement, making it inaccurate. The actual language is: "Almost 90 percent of global marine fish stocks are now fully exploited or overfished".
Furthermore, they need more context as to what overfished even means. The definition of overfished vs. overfishing is critical because an overfished fishery does not mean overfishing is occurring. It simply means the fishery is below 80% of its targeted biomass. A fishery could improve in biomass, and overfishing is NOT occurring, but it still meets the 'overfished' definition.
Most importantly, per the FAO, "82.5 percent of the 2019 landings were from biologically sustainable stocks." Looking at global fisheries, having landings from over 80% of the volume coming from biologically sustainable stocks is not a story of doom and destruction of our oceans.
We know and acknowledge that the industry has issues with IUU, Human Rights, Harvesting, and Chemical Adulteration at processing. However, our message is always, "Eat more seafood, not less."
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