The Food Medic - S2 E8 - Sustainable Seafood

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

On this episode Dr.Hazel sits down with Lucy Erickson, who is the Science Communications Manager for the Marine Stewardship Council, an international NGO on a mission to end overfishing and ensure future generations can enjoy wild seafood. They discuss; overfishing, plastic in the ocean, seafood fraud, and how to support sustainable seafood practices. Did you enjoy the episode? Make sure to spread the love by giving The Food Medic podcast a 5 star rating! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Food Medic podcast. I'm your host Dr Hazel Wallace, founder and author of the Food Medic. Now guys, nearly a third of all global fish stocks are overfished and over 60% are fished to the maximum sustainable yield. And millions of non-target sea creatures such as dolphins are accidentally killed every year as bycatch. This means that they're caught unintentionally in fishing gear. In the UK alone, we consume 5.7 billion pounds worth of fish and seafood products every year, which we import from more than 85 countries. The decline of our sea life and ocean health isn't just a problem for our oceans,

it also affects those who rely on seafood for income. The impact isn't just on fishing and coastal communities, there are wider implications for the global food security too. So this week we're going to hear from Lucy Erickson who is the Science Communications Manager for the Marine Stewardship Council or the MSC, an international NGO on a mission to end overfishing and ensure future generations can enjoy wild seafood. But before we dive into the next episode, just a little reminder to keep on listening to the end of the show for this week's challenge. Not only is it going to help the environment, it's going to save you money too. Okay, Lucy, first of all, welcome to the podcast.

It's really great to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. Before we deep dive into sustainable seafood and protecting the ocean, can you tell us a little bit about your background and career paths so far? Yes, so I grew up in Vancouver, which is right next to the ocean in Canada. So I've always loved the ocean and the marine sphere, but I didn't actually start out to be a marine biologist or a conservationist. I actually started studying a biomedical sciences degree because I really wanted to help people. But about halfway through my degree, I realized it wasn't really clicking. And I realized there was another way that I could use science to help

people. And that was through conservation biology. So what I really like about this sector is it's really holistic. So you're talking about helping the planet, protecting the environment, but without forgetting that people live here too and we need to make sure we're taking into account their needs like livelihoods for example. Yeah absolutely. So let's just kind of take it back a step. What are the biggest threats to the ocean and marine life currently? I know that's a huge question. Is it plastic? Is it pollution? about it. We all know not to use single-use plastic straws, for example. And that's something I've had some personal experience with too. So before I worked in London, I lived in Vietnam in a fishing village called Mui Ne for about five months. While we were there, we participated in a lot of beach cleanups. One time we got down to the beach and there was so much trash that you could pick it up with both of your arms. Just reach down and scoop up whole armfuls.

They had to call in the army, and they were picking up all the trash off the beach with backhoes and putting it into dump trucks to take it away. Oh, my God. So for me, that really hammered home, like, the oceans are in crisis, and we need to help. But the thing about plastic is it's so pervasive in the public right now,

and it touches all of our daily lives, but it's not necessarily the biggest problem facing the oceans so overfishing which in a nutshell is taking out more fish than are able to reproduce in the ocean is also a huge problem and for the marine stewardship council the NGO where I work that's the problem that we're trying to tackle yeah and so can you give us an overview to the kind of the current state of the oceans at the moment? Because, you know, there's that statistic that a lot of people have been thrown around. There's going to be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Is that true?

So I'm going to double mind about those kind of big stats, you know, because it's so important to get people excited. And sometimes that kind of messaging is really shocking is what gets people to act. Yeah. But it's much more nuanced than that. And that's the first thing to say. So the oceans are definitely in trouble. Globally, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, called the FAO, they do every two years a big survey of how fish populations are doing.

And right now, about 33% of the world's oceans are overfished. On the other hand, about 7% are underfished. But that's not necessarily a good thing because it means that we're not using that fish resource necessarily to its fullest extent to feed people. And then about 60% of the world's oceans are actually doing okay. They're what's called maximally sustainably fished. So it means right now, fishing levels are healthy,

but they could become overfished in future. So I means right now fishing levels are healthy, but they could become overfished in future. So I guess what I think about it is it's not as bad as you might think, but the real scientific evidence base is bad enough. So it's definitely warrants action. Yeah. And I think to kind of give everyone else a greater understanding and myself included, how does overfishing happen it's a great question okay so if you think about a fish population in the ocean if you are fishing and you say you take out a few fish every day but some fish in the population will then have baby fish and so the population will restore itself and so over time that's what we call sustainable fishing it's just

taking out the same amount that gets put back in. So overfishing happens when you take out too much fish in any given day or month or year and so the fish population doesn't have a chance to replenish itself and over time the whole population goes down and down and down until eventually maybe it can't recover. A really good example of this was in Canada actually the Grand Banks Cod. So around 1997, cod was overfished there to the point where it basically went extinct. And all the communities that were depending on the cod fishery in that part of the world then had no livelihood. And that overfishing incident was what really prompted the MSC, the Marine Stewardship Council to be formed. And it was WWF, a big NGO, and Unilever, who are a big business, who sold a lot of fish fingers, came together to say,

okay, we need to stop overfishing, not only to save the environment, but also to make sure we can feed people in the future. Let's come together and make an organization focusing on tackling this problem. Yeah. And you mentioned that, obviously, there's certain fish stocks that were overfishing, but then there's some that we're underfishing and then there's some that we're getting just about right. So what can we do as consumers to ensure that we are consuming seafood in a sustainable way? And are there certain fish that are kind of infamous, I guess, for being overfished. So you might have heard of the bluefin tuna. These are these humongous, amazing fish. They can be the size of a car, basically. And one of their populations, the Pacific bluefin tuna, was overfished so much, they think there's only about 3% of the population left. And just a few weeks ago, one of those bluefin tuna sold for $3 million.

Oh my gosh. Yes. So there's still demand for these kind of fish, even as they get more and more rare. But you're probably, and I'm probably, and most people will never be in a situation where they're going to be offered bluefin tuna. So it's not just as simple as saying no to bluefin tuna. The MSC looks at fishing really holistically. So to be certified as sustainable to the MSC program, it's about the fish stocks, but it's also about the fishing method. So when you're fishing, are you having any impact on the surrounding ecosystem, like coral reefs, for example, or any other species?

And then also what rules are in place to make sure that if you do start overfishing, you can stop and allow the fish stocks to replenish, for example. And that process usually takes about 18 months, and our standard is like 300 pages long. So we don't expect any consumer, any person who just wants to know what fish to eat to understand all that fully. So what we do is we have an eco label, and it's a little blue fish and a check mark inside. And we work with retailers to make sure that that's on sustainable products. So if you look for the blue fish in supermarkets, that's probably the easiest way to know what you can and can't eat. The nice thing about MSC is that it's really pervasive all over the world. So there's about 30,000 labeled products, I think, globally. And it's not just something that's really expensive.

Sainsbury's has loads and loads of labeled products, as do lots of other supermarkets, which cater to all kinds of budgets, basically. And there's also other things you can do. So, for example, there's a great NGO in the UK called the Marine Conservation Society, and they have a seafood watch card. And so this is like a red, green, amber rating system where you can quickly see if your fish doesn't have a label on it, at least you know that it's green rated by that NGO. Yeah, that's really useful do you know

maybe you don't from the top of your head what percentage of like fish products sold in supermarkets have the MSC label oh that's a really good question I don't have it off the top of my head but I'll say it varies a lot yeah so the UK is one of the highest as is Germany and then other countries around the world have less recognition so there's less for example in the US but it's growing. Okay cool and we'll share that that little logo for people to keep an eye out on but I'm sure most people have recognized it anyway I see it all the time in supermarkets so that's great to see. Okay so from a human health and also food security perspective why is it important to protect the oceans and the marine species?

Now, you touched on this in the beginning, but it'd be good to kind of give people an overview. We're not just concerned about the fish, we're also concerned about human health as well. Yes, absolutely. So seafood is actually the most traded food commodity in the world. It gets traded more than coffee or sugar or even rice. And that was a stat that really surprised me.

So fish is so pervasive in our global food system. In the UK, we have a lot of choice about what proteins that we go for. But in some parts of the world, fish is providing a lot more of the staple animal protein. So it's not just something that we can say, let's just stop all fishing, because it would really have an impact on people's well-being. And here in the UK, the NHS recommends eating two portions of fish a week, including one of oily fish. And so it's also a health issue here as well. Yeah, because fish provides us with so many other nutrients apart from protein,

like in particular omega-3. So it is a very healthy food to have in your diet. But again, it comes down to moderation. And what about microplastics in fish that we eat? Is that a big concern? So this is something that's more and more on our radar and right now there isn't any evidence either way about the impact of microplastic consumption on humans but we're keeping an eye on it because it's so important. There definitely is evidence of microplastics going into seafood that's destined for human consumption. And there's evidence of the microplastics in the fish.

So we're sort of waiting as well to see what that impact could be for humans. Yeah, so we don't really know yet. And for people who don't know or aren't familiar with the concept of microplastics, can you just briefly explain what they are? Yes. So a lot of the plastic in the oceans you can't actually see. It's broken down over time and it ends up being these tiny particulates called microplastics that float just below the surface. The problem is that they're about the same size as some of the plankton that

fish would eat. And so you end up with fish eating these instead of plankton. And then those microplastics accumulate in small fish, which are eaten by bigger fish, and it accumulates up the food chain in the same way that mercury might do. Okay, so seafood fraud, which is selling seafood products with a misleading label, for example, or description or promise has become widespread. And a statistic that I actually plucked from the MSC website suggested that approximately 30% of seafood across the world is mislabeled. What has been done to prevent this from happening? And how can we as consumers ensure that the product that we're purchasing is correctly labeled? Seafood fraud is such a big issue. And it might be even more pervasive than you realize. So for example, in the UK, a lot of

fish and chips has what's called rockfish in it, which is actually shark. It might just be labeled as fish and chips. So there's no fish species even associated with that dish. Wow. Yeah. And another like gross example is, have you heard of a skate or a ray, like a manta ray? Yeah. So there's an example I heard, which is you could take a skate or a ray and you could just punch out its wings into little circle shapes and then sell those as scallops oh my gosh so these are like really extreme examples

of seafood fraud a lot of seafood fraud though just comes down to fish all look the same once it's in a fillet so you you do get seafood mislabeling which is just accidental and it's not all as terrible as the example but yeah globally about 30% of seafood is mislabeled. And this is something that is bad for all kinds of reasons. You don't want to be eating something that's not what it says on the tin. But also, if your seafood isn't labeled properly, it means that you don't know where it came from. So you don't know if it was harvested sustainably.

Maybe it was harvested illegally. There's just no way to know. So what the MSC has done is we actually have a parallel standard, which is called the chain of custody standard. And every single company or retailer or packaging company or anything that touches a piece of MSC certified fish along the supply chain has to be certified. You have to be able to trace the fish back the whole way through the supply chain to exactly where it came from. This is in a way why the MSC is different from other seafood rating programs. So the seafood cards I mentioned earlier are really good for knowing if the fish that you have is sustainable

or not, except you don't always know if the fish you have is what it says it is. So we have this extra layer, I guess, of evidence. But there's loads of new technologies trying to address seafood fraud. And so things like blockchain can be used along the seafood supply chain as well to make sure that whatever product is coming out in the store is traceable back to a sustainable source too. Yeah, that blockchain is just popping up everywhere. I'm not even going to try explain what it is because I don't think I've got my head around it either. So in addition to the food that we consume or the fish that we consume,

what else can we be doing to protect our oceans? I know we spoke about plastic and especially reducing our single-use plastic consumption, but I think everyone's aware of that. Are there any other things that we should be doing? Yes. So I think everything is connected. And when you make good environmental choices,

for other reasons, it often has an impact on the ocean as well. So, for example, one of the biggest sources of microplastic in the ocean, like way, way bigger than microbeads or anything that's in the press now, is like flakes from car tires. So when your car tires go bald, all that plastic that's come off of the car tire has to go somewhere. And it basically just runs down into the ocean. And so using public transport, we know that's good for stopping climate change and stopping emissions, but it's also good for the oceans. So that's one example. In general, having a little bit less red meat in your diet is important for climate emissions too, and eventually that will help the oceans, especially if you care about coral reefs. Climate change has some really devastating impacts on coral reefs through what's called coral bleaching

when the ocean just gets too hot and corals start to die off and so anything you do to fight climate change will also help for oceans as well. Yeah and what about like pollutants and like runoff from the land is that an issue especially when it comes to kind of farming methods that are non-organic yeah so sustainable farming methods are definitely linked in as well especially if there's going to be runoff down to the ocean so supporting sustainable farming is definitely a positive as well okay so lucy i'm interested to ask you now the whole concept of sustainable eating is really a huge movement, particularly veganism and going plant-based in order to help protect the planet. Do you think it's okay to still consume fish?

So essentially, yes, you can still consume fish. And there was some really interesting research done just this summer. It was the biggest and kind of most holistic look at the environmental impact of all kinds of food systems globally. It was done by Dr. Ray Hilborn in the University of Washington. And what he found is that a mix of vegetarian and fish-based diet can have less carbon impact than going full vegetarian or even full vegan. And the reason for that is that a lot of fish species, because they're living in the ocean and they're eating the ocean, they don't require any food or land. And so going out and catching them is a very clean and energy efficient way of getting protein. One great example is mussels. So mussels filter the water that they're in. So if you were to farm mussels, what you do is you literally just put a long rope into the ocean. You sprinkle some mussel seeds around it,

and the mussels attach to the rope, they grow, they filter the water, and then you pull them out and eat them. So it's an incredibly low-impact way of getting seafood, and in fact it helps the environment. Okay, so it's quite nice to hear that, because we often hear the other side of the coin, but again it comes down to where you're sourcing your fish also and how much fish you're actually consuming so we need to bear in mind those principles as well which you've talked us through already on the show so to kind

of summarize everything that we spoke about today what kind of three takeaways would you give to our listeners when it comes to eating fish in a sustainable way? So I would say that the most important thing to remember is that you don't have to give up eating fish to make a positive difference. And that by engaging in these kind of programs, which promote sustainable fishing and reward fishers who fish sustainably, you're helping not just the ocean, but also the people who rely on the ocean and your own health. So it's a really a win-win and I would say for the easiest way to choose sustainable seafood keep an eye out for the MSC's blue fish label and then as a backup you can download one of these apps from Marine Conservation Society or

Monterey Bay Aquarium or Vancouver's Aquarium Oceanwise program and they also have really good seafood rating programs. Wonderful and if people want to find out more from you or MSC, where should they go? You can visit MSC's website, which is just msc.org. Or you can find me on Twitter. I'm at Wake Up Fishy, which is a Finding Nemo reference. Oh, I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. It was super insightful. I'm sure everyone will gain lots from it. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. It was super insightful and I'm sure everyone will gain lots from it. Thank you so much, Hazel. Okay, guys, we just heard from Lucy from the MSC and I hope that you found it as useful as I did.

I think the biggest takeaway from that is that you can eat fish and you can eat it sustainably. And also from my perspective, it's actually a really healthy food to have in your diet so it's just about moderation and in line with the nhs recommendations if you have two portions of fish per week and one of them being oily you're absolutely going to stay on track and like lucy said just keep an eye out for that little blue msc label in supermarkets to know that you're getting the

best source fish possible. Now we discussed a lot to do with eating sustainably throughout this episode and we've also discussed it on other episodes but one of the biggest things we need to address is food waste. Now we throw away 7 million tons of food and drink from our homes every year much of which could have been eaten. It's costing us £12.5 billion a year and it has a huge impact on the environment also. So I'm challenging you to have a look in your cupboards at home before you go shopping this week and only buy what you absolutely need. I guarantee you, you probably have enough food between your fridge, your freezer, the cupboard to make a meal.

If you need some inspiration, I've got an awesome cupboard stew on the website using chickpeas, tinned tomatoes and sweet corn. It's super easy to make and I promise you it's so delicious. Make sure to tag me in your pictures and use the hashtag the food medic challenge. That's all for me guys. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you again next time. P.S. don't forget to leave me a review and a five-star rating as I really appreciate it.