The Western Central Pacific is the last remaining healthy fishery in the world and the source of over half the world’s tuna. Yellowfin and bigeye tuna have been in constant decline since 2001 – both are now in an overfished state.

This is taking place in Tahiti.

On the negotiatiing table according to Greenpeace are issues such as closing the high seas pockets to all. In 2008, two of our the four nets were closed for net fishing. Now Pacific Islands which includes Australia, are calling for the other two to be closed.

Another one is to halve the fishing of the threatened big eye tuna and to ban deadly fishing magnets.

Greenpeace want fish aggregation devices to be fully banned after discovering that it wasn’t fully banned despite the rule coming in in 2008.

Australia’s festivities are that great over the festive period that they tend to go on holidays and leave food in fridges which then gets out dated and thrown in the bin.

It generates a lot of waste for the country and it also sometimes makes the country look a lot messier if the waste is not disposed properly.

It’s not just a food problem in Australia.

While most of it will be ingested, more than a third of food in Europe and the United States will grow moldy fur in the back of the fridge, pass its use-by date and land in garbage.

 In the United Kingdom, according to a leading European magazine, the UK, one of Europe’s worst food waste offenders, around 6.7 million tons of purchased and edible food, worth £10.2 billion (11.2 billion euros, $16.6 billion), are annually discarded.

Around 4.1 million tons of this wasted food comes directly from food manufacturers.

Then comes the smell.

“In Europe we consume so much globalized food, like kiwis from New Zealand and pineapples from Australia – all of which has to be transported over thousands of kilometers to get here,” Harjula told Deutche Well.

Then you think of the countries like Sudan and in and around Africa that are poor and needing food. Indonesia, so close to Australia, has thousands of starving people.

There hasn’t been a bigger gap in world society yet than now.

Maybe they should be looking to organic food?

Organic food is the best way to curb global warming, heart disease, diabetes and cancer according to a report in the UK’s Daily Mail.

The Mail suggests that the traditional Sunday lunch could become a thing of the past under plans by key Government green advisors to slash Britain’s meat, cheese and milk consumption.

A hard hitting report by the Sustainable Development Commission is calling for a ‘radical change’ in the UK’s diet to prevent dangerous global warming and tackle heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The study says Britons need to eat less meat and dairy produce, cut down on junk food and reduce the amount of waste they throw into bins.

The food and drink industry has reacted angrily to the report – claiming that the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers would suffer if consumers switched away from meat and dairy.

Fruit and vegetables are now on the menu along with eating fish from sustainable sources, buying more organic food and drinking more tap water instead of bottled water.

Just imagine your plate full of prawns this Christmas.

Commercial fishermen are harvesting huge hauls of school prawns, which due to their size are easily being confused for King prawns.

“In my 20 years in seafood, these catches are by far the biggest ocean schooling prawns I have seen,” Shane Geary of the Coffs Harbour Fishermen’s Co-op told The Coffs Coast Advocate.

“All the pro fishermen have put it down to one thing – the floods.

“When there’s a drought on land, there’s a drought at sea, and when there’s a flood it flows through to the ocean washing prawns and a lot of nutrients from the estuaries out to sea,” he said.

It is understood Coffs based trawlers are said to be pulling up a tonne a day, often close to shore, but as far north as the Gold Coast.

So this Christmas, a tragedy has turned into a real treat.

In Australia, supermarkets are still selling good portions of organic foods despite their more expensive nature compared to their comparative foods.

Even those things such as organic shampoos and cosmetics are still being consistently bought.

And internationally it seems, supermarket sales of environmentally sustainable or ‘ethical’ products are set to rise by 8.7 per cent to nearly $38 billion this year, according to a report in The Telegraph in London. 

Perhaps even more surprising is that organic food is booming in Eastern Europe. 

In Poland almost every supermarket sells it, while the sales of an organic online shop more than doubled in a year.

In Romania sales of the pesticide-free produce in the first half of this year were more than 15 times higher than in the equivalent period in 2008 in 21 supermarkets owned by the French chain Carrefour. And in Hungary weekly organic markets are being held all over the country.

So the environmentally free people are still paying extra for those natural ingredients but they are prepared to continue even if the tough times financially continue.

It appears that nature is thicker than money for some people.

SWEDEN’S shoppers are set to be the first to know what carbon dioxide emissions are associated with the food that they are buying with products to list this and restaurants are also following suit.

The New York Times reports  changing diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.

”We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said Ulf Bohman, head of the nutrition department at the Swedish National Food Administration.

”We’re used to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”

Some of the proposed dietary guidelines could shock shoppers as they recommend that Swedes choose carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes.

And they are advised to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions from raising cattle.

”For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr Bohman said. ”You are getting environmental advice that you have to co-ordinate with, ‘How can I eat healthier?’ ”

Some experts say Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 per cent.

An estimated 25 per cent of the emissions in industrialised nations can be traced to the food, according to recent research here.

It is expected this will be circulated across Europe and around the world in years to come.

Thermo Fisher is a comprehensive provider of solutions for environment and food safety.

Thermo Fisher is making the easy-to-use resource centers available to the world’s scientific community to share its extensive knowledge and help accelerate scientific discovery.

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They have got the information from a three-year investigation of the global trade in Brazilian cattle products. The Greenpeace report names Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Marks & Spencer among dozens of high-profile companies that it says profit from products supplied by Brazilian farms on illegally deforested land. Much of the trade is in processed beef, used for pies, canned meat and frozen ready meals. The supermarkets insist it is not from the Amazon.

“UK companies are driving the destruction of the Amazon by buying beef and leather products from unscrupulous suppliers in Brazil. These products are ending up on our shelves.” Sarah Shoraka, Greenpeace
The investigation also tracked the global trade in other Brazilian goods made from cattle. It names Nike, Adidas, Timberland and Clarks Shoes among companies it says use leather linked to Amazon destruction.
Greenpeace wants companies to refuse to buy products sourced from farms that have carried out illegal deforestation. It wants consumers to pressure supermarkets and high-street brands identified in the report to clean-up supply chains.

“The cattle industry is the single biggest cause of deforestation in the world and is a disaster for the fight against climate change.” Sarah Shoraka, Greenpeace

Cattle farming is now the biggest threat to the remaining Amazon rainforest, a fifth of which has been lost since 1970. Big ranches are blamed for 80% of all deforestation in the region; the number of cattle in the Amazon grew from 21m in 1995 to 56m in 2006.

The report, Slaughtering the Amazon, describes how ranches responsible for illegal deforestation sell cattle to slaughterhouses controlled by a handful of Brazilian companies. These ship beef or hides to facilities in the south of Brazil and process them for export. They are often processed again in the importing country.

Greenpeace says records show that cattle from hundreds of farms across the Amazon are mixed and processed in this way, making it currently impossible to trace the origins of products. “In effect, criminal or ‘dirty’ supplies of cattle are ‘laundered’ through the supply chain.”

No

Atlantic Salmon
Barramundi (sea caged)
Blue Warhou
Broadbill Swordfish
Commercial Scallop
Deepsea Perch
Eastern Gemfish
Flake
Gemfish
Hake
Kingfish
Mulloway
Ocean Trout
Orange Roughy
Oreo
Redfish
Shark (flake)
Silver Trevally
Snapper (pink)
Southern Blue-fin Tuna
Swordfish
Yellow-tail Kingfish

Yes

Abalone
Australian Salmon
Blue Mussel
Blue Swimmer Crab
Bream
Calamari
Crayfish
Cuttlefish
Flathead
King George Whiting
Leatherjacket
Mullet
Mulloway – wild fishery
Octopus
Oysters
Squid
Trevally
Western Rock Lobster
Yellow-tail Kingfish

For more information visit www.amcs.org.au

It tastes better, obviously this is subject but many people buy organic products because of the taste. This is because organic fruit and veg is grown slowly (as they should) and has a lower water content, which attribute to a fuller flavour.

It’s healthier; on average organic food contains higher levels of vitamins and minerals compared to non-organic food.

Helps the environment and wildlife; organic farming supports wildlife and the environment because they don’t use sprays and chemicals. Organic farming also has higher levels of animal welfare standards than system farming.

No additives; food additives have been associated with rashes, headaches, asthma and growth retardation. They’re best avoided.

Antibiotic additives are routinely added to animal food in conventional farming to speed growth even though these have been linked with bacterial resistance in humans to the same or closely related antibiotics. 

Foods that have been certified as organic provides a guarantee that the product have been grown, handled and distributed while avoiding the risk of contamination, and can be traced back fully along the supply line.