Set against the backdrop of the larger American food system, the
seafood deficit, is, well, fishy. Many of the US most important landfoods
are trending in the opposite direction. Corn, anybody? Plenty of it —
surpluses of it, in fact. Beef? Enough domestic production to supply
every American with around eighty pounds a year — five times the
national per capita rate of seafood consumption.
Meanwhile, the paucity of domestic fish and shellfish in our markets and in our diets continues even as foreign seafood floods in at a tremendous rate. In the last half century American seafood imports have increased by a staggering 1,476 percent.
It gets fishier still. While 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign, a third of the seafood Americans catch gets sold to foreigners. By and large the fish and shellfish we are sending abroad are wild while the seafood we are importing is very often farmed. Two hundred million pounds of wild Alaska salmon, a half billion pounds of pollock, cod, and other fish-and-chips-type species, a half billion pounds of squid, scallops, lobsters, and other shellfish is, every year, being sent abroad, more and more often to Asia; untold tons of omega-3-rich seafood are leaving our shores to help other countries lower their rates of heart disease, raise their cognitive abilities, and lengthen their life expectancy.
American consumers suffer from a deficit of American fi sh, but someone out there somewhere is eating our lunch.
How did we land ourselves in such a confoundingly American catch?
Read more: American catch: The fight for our local seafood | GreenBiz.com
Meanwhile, the paucity of domestic fish and shellfish in our markets and in our diets continues even as foreign seafood floods in at a tremendous rate. In the last half century American seafood imports have increased by a staggering 1,476 percent.
It gets fishier still. While 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign, a third of the seafood Americans catch gets sold to foreigners. By and large the fish and shellfish we are sending abroad are wild while the seafood we are importing is very often farmed. Two hundred million pounds of wild Alaska salmon, a half billion pounds of pollock, cod, and other fish-and-chips-type species, a half billion pounds of squid, scallops, lobsters, and other shellfish is, every year, being sent abroad, more and more often to Asia; untold tons of omega-3-rich seafood are leaving our shores to help other countries lower their rates of heart disease, raise their cognitive abilities, and lengthen their life expectancy.
American consumers suffer from a deficit of American fi sh, but someone out there somewhere is eating our lunch.
How did we land ourselves in such a confoundingly American catch?
Read more: American catch: The fight for our local seafood | GreenBiz.com
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