Leave it to Greenpeace to repackage all their scary messages and predictions about the future of tuna into a short list of yawners. In a recent blog list that alleges industry support for “some of the worst fishing practices tuna companies execute” Greenpeace twists and turns their claims every which way to frighten retailers and shoppers alike.
Their haphazard tally includes the practice of “tuna ranching”—raising juvenile tuna species in ocean tanks rather than fishing for them in the wild—as the third worst offender. Except tuna ranching has nothing to do with canned tuna producers or the way we fish. Likewise, the number one bogeyman on this decidedly non-definitive list is the “overfishing” of Bluefin tuna. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t find any Bluefin in any “colorful cans of tuna on grocery shelves across the world. ” U.S. canners fish responsibly from skipjack and albacore tuna populations that are thriving, because nobody cares more about sustainable tuna than the people who depend upon it as a way of life.
In fact, we invited Greenpeace 800 days ago to partner with the U.S. companies and the International Seafood Sustainably Foundation (ISSF) and we still have no answer.
Do the activists at Greenpeace not know any better? Do they not care? Or are they intentionally misleading their contributors and donors?
We do agree with one thing Greenpeace says in their list. “When what you do is hundreds of miles from civilization, it’s pretty easy to get away with some messed up stuff.” Indeed. And when what Greenpeace does is hundreds of thousands of miles from its donors, it’s pretty easy to get away with rhetoric of their own. That’s why we made a little list of our own.