Here's the letter the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has sent laying out its conditions for becoming the Marine Stewardship Council's new "client" for salmon certification.
One of the main points is that ASMI wants the partnership with the MSC to be "cost neutral to ASMI."
It proposes having the MSC extract the $250,000 in costs directly from industry players who benefit from the MSC logo. The MSC would then pass the funds along to ASMI, which would use part of the money to hire a new employee.
The letter raises plenty of other key points and is well worth reading.
For background on this subject, click here.
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6 comments:
How dare MSC have come to any conclusion other than ADF&G is the world's fishery manager par excellence? Then at letter's end, ASMI evinces its desire to have MSC work in a complementary fashion? What else can ASMI mean but that MSC is supposed to bend over and kiss the state's and industry's collective asses. If I were MSC, I'd take my label and get out of Dodge.
I say good ridance to MSC and please close the door on your way out. We Alaskan fishermen do not need MSC to help sustain or market our fisheries.
wow...dripping with arrogance, once again. While F&G has certainly done a good job managing AK's fisheries, they're just soooo damn defensive to other suggestions or constructive criticsm. Hello? Isn't outside review an integral part of any good science?
hey in fifty years I'm sure PWS will not need any help to promote its hatchery only "wild" salmon to world markets after the predictable collapse of its real wild salmon stocks which are now treated with such cavalier.
(In response to the 2nd commenter), Alaskan salmon fishermen were the ones to welcome MSC certification to begin with, looking for anything to help market "wild" salmon in the face of farmed-salmon's increasing market share. Of course, the industry was delighted to have the State of Alaska pay for the certification. The State, in turn, was delighted with the underlying sweetheart deal of the first certification -- MSC needed to certify a major fishery to put itself on the map and become a player, while the Alaska salmon industry needed a marketing edge. During the first certification, MSC,ADF&G, and industry had no intention that there would be an independent review of salmon fishery management. How could there be when ADF&G was paying MSC to conduct the review and providing MSC with the information and analysis for its "review." Besides MSC presumed from the get-go -- as did the state and industry -- that Alaska salmon fishery management met its sustainability criterion.
So, now that MSC is not quite as docile a lap dog and the salmon industry does not feel as threatened by farmed salmon, it's good riddance. Makes sense to me.
Whether or not ADFG needs someone looking over their shoulder/telling them how to do their job, the 5th commenter said that nobody (fishermen, MSC, or ADFG) intended for there to be an "independent review of salmon fishery management". Hello...that's just what the MSC process was established to provide...an independent, 3rd party review, so that the end consumer could sleep well at night knowing that their seafood purchase was good for the planet, or whatever. No one should claim that they were snowed by this...and this is why many were leery of entering into the MSC process in the first place.
But the 3rd commenter also hit on an important point...an organization that is supposed to be managing on science (ADFG) should not be so resistant to outside scrutiny. If they are that good (and they are) then they should welcome it, defend what they do...and, every now and then, embrace something else when a good suggestion is made. To do otherwise is "arrogant".
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