Organic" seafood is everywhere. At a conference last winter in Jacksonville, FL, a company spokeswoman entreated me to sample "organic" shrimp farmed in Ecuador. The owner of our town's natural foods store recently raved about her glistening, bright orange filets of "organic" salmon farmed in Scotland, also the country or origin of the "organically farmed" cod I encountered on a restaurant menu recently in New York. So it might come as a surprise that, legally, there is no such thing as organic seafood in the United States. Confused? That may be intentional. At very least, calling seafood "organic" in this country is deceptive, misleading, and a violation of the Organic Foods Production Act, says the Center for Food Safety, which recently filed a complaint and legal petition with the USDA to ban the use of "organic" in connection with seafood. The USDA's National Organic Standards Board is still at work on the thorny issue of defining what criteria seafood must meet in order to bear the USDA Organic label (read a .pdf link about it here). Meanwhile, seafood purveyors skirt the lack of regulations by selling products that have been certified by foreign, nongovernmental agencies such as Britain's Organic Food Federation and Germany's Naturland. Their standards fall far below what American consumers consider organic. A knowledgeable friend of mine says a more accurate label from the Europeans would read something along the lines of: "Slightly better than conventionally raised seafood—maybe."
Politics of the Plate: Fishy Labeling
07.16.07
- Keywords
- labeling,
- seafood,
- politics of the plate,
- barry estabrook
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