|
July 9, 2010
Eat for today and tomorrow
Ocean Wise means fish have been sustainably harvested.
JEANIE KEOGH
“If we’re not using sustainable food, then there is not going to be any left.”
These are the words of chef Chris Beltrano of Trafalgars Bistro on Arbutus and West 16th in Vancouver. Trafalgars, along with 370 other Canadian businesses, participates in the Ocean Wise program, purchasing fish that has been harvested in an environmentally friendly way.
Launched by the world-class Vancouver Aquarium, Ocean Wise helps educate everyone, from suppliers, distributors to consumers, about how to make decisions that will help maintain fish stocks. The idea is to encourage the fishing industry to harvest just enough fish so that populations increase slightly or stay stable for generations.
“Fisheries represent the last true wild hunt on the planet. It is the last large-scale commercial or industrial wild hunt and that puts them in a very unique category. Obviously, historically, we haven’t had a great track record with wild hunts because we end up depleting populations, in some cases to extinction,” said Mike McDermid, the Vancouver Aquarium coordinator of Ocean Wise.
Membership in the program has doubled every year since it began in 2005. It is now operating across Canada and abroad, in parts of Australia. It started with getting chefs to highlight Ocean Wise fish on their menus, making it easier for consumers to make informed decisions.
“Chefs set those culinary trends. They have an amazing ability to change people’s traditional tastes because they bring out the next hot item, and they have the ability to change our taste from just salmon to just tuna all the time and to try some of these great local sustainable options that we might not have tried before, because we’ll trust what a great chef puts on the plate is going to taste delicious,” said McDermid.
This led to lesser-known fish like sablefish becoming more popular, a species that McDermid said, eight years ago, nobody knew about and that now has a sustainable fishery.
An extension of the Ocean Wise program is Blue Water Café’s Unsung Heroes festival. A founding member of Ocean Wise, the Yaletown restaurant puts together an exotic menu in February when more popular fish stocks, like salmon, halibut and trout, are out of season. Instead, the kitchen is stocked with sardine, mackerel and herring, seafood varieties that many have never tried.
The premise is, “If it’s not in season, you don’t serve it,” said Shelley McArthur, communications director for Top Table Restaurant Group, which includes Blue Water Café. If it goes out of season, you don’t serve it – frozen or farmed, she said.
Beltrano said designing his menu according to Ocean Wise standards is his biggest priority.
“It’s a responsibility every chef and restaurant should have. We basically set the standards for what food gets out there. I think, by and large, the reason I do it and, typically, most other restaurants do it, is we don’t have any other choice,” said Beltrano.
Long before Ocean Wise began, the laws of kashrut maintained a healthy respect for fish that is on par with the concepts the program champions, said Rabbi Yitzchak Wineberg, spiritual leader of Lubavitch B.C. in Vancouver.
“Judaism takes sustainability very very seriously. Where things come from and what those things are goes hand in hand. Not just stuffing your face with food but, more so, being mindful and respectful of our food sources and our food supplies,” he said.
Wineberg said the story of Adam and Eve being told by God not to eat the fruit of the tree contained the message that, as long as a natural resource can be replenished, human beings can use everything.
“The underpinning of Jewish law and food consumption is a general attitude that we are responsible for our environment. There is an element of culpability and responsibility that everything that you use has to be something that can regenerate itself,” he said.
The Torah mandates that the land must lie fallow for one year out of seven, another example of teaching Jews not to abuse the earth through excess. The same underlying message of sustainability can be applied to gluttony.
“We don’t know the reason for it but we understand that what it means is that we have to respect the earth which nurtures us and provides us with our needs,” said Wineberg.
But fish have a special place in kashrut. Ninety-seven percent of all fish are kosher, unlike other animals. The kabbalistic explanation, Wineberg said, is that fish have a more spiritually refined status on the scale of creation than do land animals or fowl.
McDermid recognized that many kosher companies are also Ocean Wise.
“A lot of the companies that we work with that are doing things very sustainably also tend to be kosher certified. I don’t know if that’s a respect for product. The other thing that we see is a direct correlation between the sustainability of the fishery and the quality of the product and I think a lot of time with the kosher products, they tend to be a higher quality product. I think maybe it has to do with how much care the businesses put into their products,” McDermid said.
The Ocean Wise label extends to grocery store goods, university campuses and private clubs. There is even an iPhone app where you can research varieties of seafood to make more sustainable decisions.
Visit vanaqua.org/oceanwise to learn more and to view a list of participating restaurants, suppliers and retail markets.
Jeanie Keogh is a Vancouver freelance writer.
^TOP
|
