Something is killing the lobsters in Long Island Sound. Fishermen fear that 2008 may be a tragic replay of 1999, when a massive die-off eliminated four-fifths of the lobsters in the waters between Connecticut and New York. What makes the situation even more unsettling is that no one knows exactly what is causing it.
Although there are a couple of likely suspects.
Earlier this week, Eric Smith, Connecticut’s director of marine fisheries, told the New Haven Register that warmer water was believed to have been a trigger for the 1999 outbreak and that the summer of 2007 was “a pretty bad temperature year.” Living at the extreme southern edge of their species’ range, Long Island Sound lobsters may be the aquatic equivalent of canaries in a coal mine—in this case acting as indicators of global warming’s effects on oceans. Some fishermen also point accusing fingers at pesticides sprayed to kill mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus.
Whatever the cause, the prognosis is glum. The stocks have yet to fully recover from the earlier epidemic, and Smith said that if the current mortality rate continues, in 10 or 15 years the sound will not have a lobster fishery.
So Go Ahead and Sue
If the government and giant foodservice companies won’t take steps to protect our health, could there be anything more American than hauling them into court?
That’s what two watchdog groups did this week. First on the docket was Burger King Corp.: The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) had brought a suit against the fast-food chain last May for its use of trans fats, and the corporation made an unsuccessful bid to have the suit dismissed. It must be getting lonely at the home of the Whopper, with Wendy’s International Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. already phasing out hydrogenated oils. And KFC Corp. stopped frying in trans fat last year after being sued by CSPI. Are those what they call precedents?
A couple of days later, it was the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) turn to feel the legal heat. The Humane Society of the United States filed a suit claiming that the agency’s regulations were inadequate to protect the nation’s food supply from meat that could carry mad cow disease.
That suit comes in the wake of the country’s largest meat recall, which was sparked by the Humane Society’s release of a truly horrifying video showing so-called downer cows being forced to stand so they could be slaughtered at a California plant owned by Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co.
Locavore Lunchrooms
One of the more sickening sides of the “downer” cow debacle was that much of the meat from Hallmark/Westland was destined for school cafeterias across the nation. So it was refreshing to see that legislators in the state of Washington voted to approve the Local Farms – Healthy Kids bill. It’s a great piece of legislation. It gives farmers a large, nearby market, educates kids, and makes sure they eat nourishing food from fields close to home—which I hope does not include meat from sick cows slaughtered in Southern California.
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