Support Organic Standards for Seafood

When you shop for organic foods, you expect the produce to be grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Similarly, when you buy seafood, you expect the fish and shrimp to meet comparable standards.

Yet, the National Organics Standards Board is recommending that the USDA allow farm raised fish, including seafood produced in ocean net pens, to be labeled “organic” despite the highly polluting, ecologically damaging effect of this method.

If this makes you mad, and it should, you are in good company. A Consumers Union poll indicates that 74 % of aware consumers are concerned about environmental pollution produced from farm raised fish and the poll reflects a near unanimous expectation ( 91 %) that consumers want contaminants to be essentially absent in organic seafood to the same levels as those set for produce.

Are you willing to help preserve the current aquaculture standards that assure that fish labeled as organic are fed 100 percent organic feed, and are produced in a way that prohibits release of waste into the immediate living environment?

Act to keep your organic seafood truly organic.

There are 2 groups offering web-based petitions for you to sign. I urge you to sign both.

You can find a petition at Consumers Union, the folks behind Consumer Reports and then go to the     Food and Water Watch and sign their petition too!