SEAFOODNEWS.COM — November 24, 2014 — Real problems in food safety led to a media frenzy covering the topic in the 1990's, and a corresponding erosion of consumer confidence.
Globally the retail food industry came together to create the Global Food Safety Initiative, and not only did they achieve mutual recognition and consensus over food safety protocols, they also reestablished consumer confidence in food safety systems.
As a result today, the media takes a far more balanced view of food safety, and when there is an individual outbreak, does not generalize it to the entire food system.
In our video today, the second in our series produced by Steve Minor on GSSI, – The Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative – we look at the parallels between the public concerns over food safety in the 1990's and today's concerns over seafood sustainability.
Today, every seafood sustainability problem is generalized to the entire global system of fisheries, so the public has a false perception about an 'intractable' problem, and fails to see how much of the industry is truly meeting remarkable sustainability goals.
The 1990's were the years of mad cow disease, multiple E Coli outbreaks, and increasing media scrutiny and public concern over food safety.
Today, despite major successes in seafood sustainability, including the US system of fisheries management, the Marine Stewardship Council's successes, and the universal support for the FAO principles of Responsible fishing and use of ecolabels in fisheries, there is still a media frenzy and widespread consumer confusion about sustainability.
Most Americans think the environmental and ecological condition of their fisheries is terrible. Yet, in most cases, the opposite is true.
This is why the GSSI iniative is an important step to restore public confidence in seafood. In our video we make this case.
This story originially appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.