Is Whole Foods seafood department really Sustainable?

Here's my response to Whole Foods' "Earth Day" announcement that it's removing 12 threatened species of fish from its seafood department:

To me, “sustainable” means something that everyone could do for an indefinite period of time without causing a collapse of one kind or another. Since “everyone” means 7 billion people, eating fish at all is not sustainable.

If we each take just one fish, there went 7 billion fish. NOT sustainable, period.

Ocean fish stocks are in total collapse from overfishing and a lack of international protective treaties. Fish farms are even worse – destroying the wild habitat, consuming massive amounts of feed and producing massive amounts of pollution.

Fish are intelligent wild animals who feel pain, can suffer, and belong to social groups. Fish are also a critical part of the ecosystem’s balance with millions of years of marine evolution balancing them between their predators and their food sources. When you take a fish from the ocean, you take it from another species who depends on it.

Choose compassion, choose sustainability – don’t eat wild fish or farmed fish.

If you feel you must have fish, grow your own in an aquaculture and recycle the waste water (in symbiosis with your garden).

DHA/Omega-3 amino acids are often used as an excuse to kill fish; however these nutrients are available from algae sources (where the fish got them).

One grocery chain sparing only a few of the most threatened species does nothing to help them recover. This just shifts the threat onto the next species of fish. This is just pure CYA brand management. Whole Foods doesn’t care about fish – they just don’t want to be “on the hook” when these fish are declared commercially extinct (in like 2015).

I do respect that Whole Foods is stopping the very worst of its profiteering from the killing of threatened fish species – but...

In order to truly own up to the damage you’ve done – you need to get out there and restore fish stocks! Not just stop killing

 Thanks and Happy Earth Day ;)