Wonderful Written – Very Intense
Grescoe is a master wordsmith. He paints such vivid word pictures that I wonder if I were to actually go to some of the places he describes I would experience déjà vu. After reading his descriptions of eating Belon oysters in France or barbequed sardines in Portugal, I had to fight the impulse to bring up Travelocity and find a flight. He has a narrative, anecdotal style that kept me flipping the pages.
I’ve long been bothered how food arrives at my plate. I’m not opposed to eating meat or fish, but I want to do it in an ethical manner. After reading “Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer I doubt that is possible with meat purchased from most sources available to me. I saw seafood as a good alternative. Then I stumbled across this book.
A telling section of the book summarizes his message, “In the unilateral arms race against the fish, our neutron bombs have already been deployed: the bottom-trawls that can devastate seamounts, the longlines that trail dozens of miles of hooks, the giant purse-seine nets big enough to handily pull in a half-dozen Los Angles class nuclear submarines. Fishing technology has gotten too good.”
As I read the book I began to wonder at the stupidity of mankind. We are not an unintelligent species, but we show little or no foresight when he comes to so many things. This unfortunately, includes fisheries. Grescoe details one collapsed or collapsing fishery after another. It some aspects it was very depressing to read. We could do such much better. We just do not.
I had always assumed that aquaculture was more or less a good thing, a viable alternative to depleting the oceans. After reading his descriptions of shrimp farming in Asia I have eaten my last shrimp. It is almost a guarantee that the shrimp we eat in the USA are from this source. Farmed salmon is nearly as noxious a proposition. What I thought was ethical, healthy eating is not.
All is not lost though; he does provide what he sees as very viable methods to reverse the depletion of our oceans. I am not holding out a lot of hope that we can get past greed and turf to institute some of his suggestions. I would like to be proven wrong.
In the meantime as concerned consumers we can play our part by avoiding certain fish. He details those, but also details those that we can eat in good conscience.
Unless you just want to totally stick your head in the sand this is a wonderful book that describes the issues, poses some possible solutions, and gives the consumer some alternate choices when it comes to dining on seafood.
It is a start…
Target pulls farmed salmon from product line.
Target pulls farmed salmon from its stores – article @ MSNBC.MSN.COM