Chinook salmon fishing has been scaled way back in California. Photo: Zureks/Wikimedia

I've been selling fish for 30 years, and I'm pleased that my store, the Monterey Fish Market, has a reputation for exceptionally fresh and sustainably sourced seafood. We're lucky in that our customers support us in our mission to provide the best possible product that doesn't contribute to the destruction of
our wild fisheries. I'm constantly impressed with their concern for the environment in general and their knowledge of fisheries issues in particular.

We emphasize seasonally available fresh seafood from local, highly regulated fisheries: Dungeness crab, hook-and-line caught rock cod, albacore, squid, sand dabs, herring, and sardines. All of these species are caught in north state waters using methods that don't harm the base fisheries. We also sell oysters, clams, and mussels grown in environmentally benign aquaculture projects in Tomales Bay and other estuaries.

These fish and shellfish are delicious, healthful, and can be eaten with a clean conscience. Still, there's something missing in my line-up in recent years, and my customers and I miss it terribly: local, wild salmon. Not long ago, Chinook salmon pulled from our cold, clean offshore waters, constituted up to 50 percent of my business. Today: zilch, nothing. That's because there hasn't been a commercial salmon season in California and Oregon for the last two years.

Oh, we still offer some wild salmon ... from Alaska and British Columbia. But because we have to compete with Asia and Europe for this very limited resource, the prices are often astronomical. And while these fish are delicious, they're still not local fish. A salmon caught in near-shore waters on hook-and-line, then promptly iced and sold within 24 hours, is in a league of its own. The freshness, the flavor ... there's nothing comparable.

So for me and Monterey Fish Market's customers and employees, it's no small matter when we lose a state salmon season. The same can be said for millions of other people in California -- anyone who works in the food or restaurant trades, supports sustainable business, enjoys angling, or simply likes eating fresh, wholesome fish. The loss of our salmon fishery is a catastrophe that cuts across all social strata.

Unhappily, the long-term outlook for this precious fishery is exceedingly grim. In 2005, almost 800,000 mature salmon returned to the Sacramento River and its tributaries to spawn. Last year, the number was only about 39,000, far too few to support fishing. Early projections are for slightly higher returns this year, but the general trend remains unchanged. California's salmon runs are collapsing.

What do we need to bring the salmon back? That's simple: water.

Salmon have evolved to spawn in freshwater streams and mature in the ocean. Any significant impediment in this cycle will drastically affect their numbers, even eliminate them entirely. It is no coincidence that our salmon population crashed at the same time Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta water exports to San Joaquin Valley corporate farms increased dramatically.

When we drain the Delta of its downriver flows, we deny the fish the water they need for their very survival. Before newly imposed protections for salmon and other fish, the huge state and federal pumps that send water south killed tens of thousands of young salmon during their downriver migration to the sea. Unless we change the way we distribute water from the Delta, our salmon will continue their slide toward extinction.

In California, water flows in the same direction as money. The West Coast's salmon fishers have been stripped of their rights and livelihoods by powerful corporate agricultural interests in the San Joaquin Valley. Though they are few in number, the owners and directors of these massive agribusiness enterprises have been able to seize the state's water for their own through lavishly funded political lobbying and a sophisticated, if deeply mendacious, public relations campaign. They technically receive water pursuant to "junior" state water rights -- meaning they are second in allocation after those who have held the rights longer -- but the spigot has been cranked wide open for them, at highly subsidized rates. Yet their only response has been to cry for more. Increasingly, they're not even using it to grow crops -- they're marketing it. A scheme to build 12,000 homes on environmentally sensitive San Francisco Bay salt ponds near Redwood City is predicated on obtaining water from San Joaquin Valley agribusiness.

When salmon numbers are low, restrictions are promptly placed on the catch, regardless of the impacts on the fishing industry. This is as it should be. Without the salmon, there is no industry. Everyone involved in this fishery, from the troller to the retailer, understands this. We may not like it, but we acknowledge the necessity of regulation.

But at the same time that fishers are fighting for their very survival, San Joaquin corporate farmers bristle at the mere whiff of restrictions on their voracious water consumption. Despite their status as junior water users, despite their knowledge that water deliveries are certain to become tighter as multiple demands stress our already limited supply, they persist in planting permanent, water-intensive crops such as almonds. [Editor's note: Matt Jenkins wrote an excellent, in-depth primer on California Central Valley water issues for High Country News.] When this strategy is questioned, they rail against "government interference."

Well, no one understands or accommodates such "interference" better than the people who catch, process, and sell salmon. If you are going to use water in this state, you must acknowledge both the limits of the resource and the rights of other citizens.

Fishing has been closed for the last two years to protect devastated salmon stocks, and will probably be closed in 2010 as well. This complete closure of the commercial and recreational salmon seasons has cost California 23,000 jobs and $2.8 billion in fishery-associated revenues. If we could bring the stocks back from their pre-crash numbers, we could reclaim those jobs and the economic prosperity they generate. Wild, sustainable fisheries are the kind of business California needs. But if the salmon are going to give us what we need, we have to give them what they need. And that's their fair share of the water. One way to do this: check out the group Water 4 Fish, which is mustering signatures for a petition to protect the salmon and steelhead populations.

Paul Johnson is the founder and president of the Monterey Fish Market, a wholesale and retail fish market in the San Francisco Bay area, and works with environmental and fishery groups to influence public policy. He is currently a member of both the Ocean Protection Council's Dungeness Crab Task Force and its California Sustainable Seafood Advisory Panel, and sits on the advisory board to the Monterey Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program. He is the author of Fish Forever (Wiley 2007), which received the IACP Cookbook of the Year award, and coauthor of The California Seafood Cookbook.

Cross-posted at Grist.org

With school lunch being debated on Capitol Hill, "Top Chef" should get in on the action and focus some kitchen challenges on school meals. One challenge could have each contestant try to cook a collection of delicious and healthy meals (breakfast and lunch) that spend less than $1 on food per meal.  Another might be to cook in a real school, perhaps H.D. Cooke Elementary School, the setting of The Slow Cook’s excellent multi-part series on school meals, or use the actual school kitchen staff as assistants, though this one might be getting a bit close to the upcoming Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on ABC. The contestants could also integrate ingredients from local farms with USDA-provided material.

Washington and the school lunch community also offers plenty of interesting possibilities for guest judges: First Lady Michele Obama, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Chef Ann Cooper (the "renegade lunch lady"), or a room full of cute and opinionated schoolchildren.

I don’t know how much of a delay "Top Chef" has between filming and broadcast, so even if they took up the school lunch challenge, Congress might have already acted* – Agweek says that Sen. Lincoln (D-AR) hopes to hold a markup session in the Senate Agriculture Committee on March 26 (via Slow Food USA) and it is not inconceivable that the new legislation could pass quickly. Nonetheless, a high-profile show like Top Chef could help shine more light on the sorry state of our school lunches and inspire action to improve them.

To stay up to date on school lunch news, visit The Lunch Box (a project of the Food Family Farming Foundation, launched by Chef Ann Cooper, which has a good Twitter feed), Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch campaign, and School Food FOCUS.

* But I wouldn’t bet on it, given the unprecedented levels of Republican obstructionism in the Senate. Even on items with unanimous approval, like the confirmation of Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, which took 6+ months to get to a 99-0 vote on cloture and her final confirmation.

Have locavores and feminists -- factions that a few years ago, some bloggers believed to be fundamentally at odds -- become allies?

That's what Peggy Orenstein suggests in her essay, "The Femivore's Dilemma," for today's New York Times Magazine. The author of several best-selling nonfiction accounts of modern women's life (and an acquaintance of mine), Orenstein thinks that "the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming [Mad Men housewife] Betty Draper." Stay-at-home moms -- at least four in Orenstein's Berkeley, Calif., orbit -- are these days obsessing less over which high-end stroller to buy (if any) and more about which tomato variety to plant or laying hen with which to stock their backyard coop.

Writes Orenstein:

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

She's on to something. Look around the food movement -- the majority of faces are female, and they by no means belong just to "yoga moms" shopping at Whole Foods and farmers markets. An about-to-be-released new book, "Farmer Jane" by Temra Costa, introduces dozens of passionate female farmers, moms, businesswomen, chefs, and activists who are changing the way we eat and farm.

In the conclusion of her essay, the ever-skeptical Orenstein hints at, but does not explore, the tension that underlies this newest flavor of feminism: "If a woman is not careful, it seems, chicken wire can coop her up as surely as any gilded cage."

And there's where we all have to be careful. The growing pressure amongst educated women to feed one's family not only home-cooked but now home-grown food can morph into just another form of guilt for women employed full-time outside the home. In an excellent blog post from 2007, Bay Area writer Jennifer Jeffrey pointed out that "this whole 'eat local' concept is so not friendly for women who work." Jeffrey, who is self-employed, recognizes that she can dash out to her local farmers market when she wants and simmer beans all afternoon:

Ladies, when we cluck our tongues at drive-through lanes and packaged convenience food, we are forgetting that convenience has been our friend. The fact that women hold more executive positions than at any other time in history, and can freely choose any career path they like is in no small part due to the prevalence of supermarkets and the availability of easy-to-prepare foodstuffs.

Perhaps the most important element here is that of "choice." It was feminists like Betty Friedan who liberated the Betty Drapers of the world, not Swanson's frozen dinners. Processed-food manufacturers were simply smart enough to provide the MREs for an army that was already on the move.

Seems to me that the women who Orenstein and Jeffreys are writing about are in fact the same women. They are simply viewing their time through different value lenses. Women are now waking up to the fact that despite what commercials tell us, cooking does not have to be a stressful nightly chore for the skirt-wearing member of the family. It's possible to make a meal together from fresh ingredients in about the same amount of time as boiling dried pasta and nuking some sauce. And while no one has to know the name of the farm their eggs came from, let alone the actual bird (as Orenstein mocks), taking the kids to the farmers market on the weekend is usually a lot more fun than dragging them through Safeway, and so is planting carrots in the back yard.

What do you think, readers? Do you ever wonder if growing, cooking, and canning your own food are somehow at odds with your feminist leanings?

The study's results are another reminder that although lists of pesticide residues like EWG's Dirty Dozen/Clean Fifteen can help consumers avoid pesticides, the effects of pesticides are felt far and wide. A newsletter from San Francisco-based CUESA eloquently examined this issue.

Note: for maneb/mancozeb, the odds ratio was 2.4 (i.e., the rate of melanoma for the study group was 2.4 times higher than the general population), with a 95% confidence interval of 1.2-4.9 for 63+ exposure days. For parathion, the odds ratio was 2.4, 95% confidence interval of 1.3-4.4 for 56+ exposure days. For carbaryl, the odds ratio was 1.7, 95% confidence interval of 1.1-2.5 for 56+ exposure days.

"What's the formula for the area of a circle?" she would ask.

"Pi r squared," I'd say.

"I always thought pie are round!" she'd reply with a smile.

Now you know where my love of bad puns originated. Thanks, Mom!

I still get a chuckle thinking about that little joke between us, and every March now, I start thinking about baking a pie for the 14th — a day otherwise known to my fellow nerds as Pi Day.

Before you groan too much, I hasten to add that I'm not alone. The good folks at ScienceBlogs and Serious Eats have a Pi Day Pie Bake-Off to encourage all those scientists and mathematicians to let loose with a little formulaic fun in the kitchen.

I haven't entered the competition, tempting though it might be. But I have lots of preserved fruits and such that have been begging for a chance to shine in some sort of dessert, so I've definitely been a little pie-eyed this week with all my baking.

I started last Sunday by making a double-crusted pie with my homemade tomatillo mincemeat. Never a fan of my parents' green-tomato mincemeat in my childhood, I learned to appreciate the sweet-and-sour mash-up a year and a half ago when I had too many tomatillos from my CSA basket. Once I put this pie together, I called my father and asked if he'd be interested in some. He immediately said he'd take as much as I wanted to give him.

Even with the vinegary kick, this was a great pie I had made — and all those who were fortunate enough to sample it agreed. (Sorry, it's all gone now.)

After that, I met up with a friend and her home-schooled teenage daughter to bake a tarte tatin. The daughter has developed a passion for baking sweet treats, and when I offered to teach her something, she seized on this classic French recipe for an apple tart. I've always had difficulty with getting the crust tucked around the apples just right, but we managed to put together a meltingly buttery-sweet dessert that looked as good as it tasted. We stayed true to the original version, though I've been known to dress it up with rosemary or lavender or even a Middle Eastern twist (recipe).

Pies don't always have to be on the sweet side. I'm very fond of quiche, so I took the opportunity this week to break in my new tart pan with a quiche made from very fresh local eggs. I used basil in the butter crust, then added dried cherry tomatoes from storage, fresh spinach and green onions, and crumbled local goat's-milk feta cheese to the filling. With the weather turning downright balmy this week, this quiche proved to be a perfect pre-springtime welcome!

By the end of the week, I was out of pie again, after sharing so much of what I had already made, so I felt the need to bake yet another one.

This time I made a whole-wheat-and-oat crust (from the "King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking" book) to support a fruit filling made from a pint of canned peaches and a pint of canned blueberries. I added a buttery brown-sugar oat crumb topping that added a nice bit of crunch, especially when I served up slices á la mode. (Ice cream in March? You'd better believe it, since the temperatures almost reached 70 this week!)

Unfortunately, I did not get around to making my favorite kind of pie this week: pecan pie. But I can still savor the memory of one famous past Pi Day pecan pie:

(Made with pecan shortbread, of course. You were expecting something else?)

You've still got time to bake a delicious pie for Pi Day, whether you opt for savory or sweet. Why not? It's easy as pie.

Photos of dough rolling and tarte tatin courtesy of Tara Reynolds; all others by the author.

Thank you, dear patient readers, for this honor, which puts us on the same menu as Barry Estabrook's terrific blog, The Politics of the Plate. We're really touched and very surprised, given that our content flow has slowed to a trickle.

The Ethicurean has gone through many transformations in the close to four years since I cofounded it with some friends. I regret that our daily posts and biweekly Digests have fallen victim to the team's busy-ness, and I hope that we can get back to more regular posting very soon. (Marc and Jennifer have been doing a great job keeping the site on life support.) I miss writing here, but the economy has taken its toll on my free time -- I have various part-time jobs now, including Deputy Food Editor for Grist.org -- and around April 1 I'll be giving birth to a tiny Ethicurean. But one thing's for certain -- I and the rest of the Ethicureans still believe more than ever in chewing the right thing, and we'll continue to share our musings on and investigations into SOLE and non-SOLE food issues with you one way or another, awards or no awards.

When it comes to choosing sustainable seafood, it’s generally a good practice for eaters to move down the food chain to smaller, non-fish-eating fish and sea creatures. But when dealing with the supply side, we need to move up the supply chain to wholesalers, retailers, and restaurants. That's just one of a number of market-based mechanisms proposed recently by an international team of experts in the academic journal Oryx. This post will look at a few ideas related to labeling and the seafood supply chain.

The labeling wish list

Market-based efforts are only as good as the traceability and labels — misleading, inaccurate or incomplete information will lead to unsustainable buying decisions or misperception about fishery conditions. It's critical that labeling standards be improved. At the most basic level, an eater or buyer needs to know the species, the location of the fish's capture (or farm), and the fishing method (or farming method) used. I'd add a slightly more difficult item to that list: for farmed fish, what were they fed? Meaning, was the diet heavy on wild fish, or rendered chicken parts, or something better like grains and greens? (For more on these aquaculture issues, see part 1 and part 2 of my series on aquaculture.)

For processed fish like frozen fillets or canned fish, a loophole in U.S. country of origin labeling prevents smart buying. Currently, the rules only require that the country of processing is listed; listing the source of the fish is completely optional. To empower buyers to make smart choices, this regulatory loophole should be closed.

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification is a good model of traceability, because its certification defines the species, location, and catch method: see the MSC page on Alaska salmon for example. The council's certification process itself, however, is another matter — the Oryx paper's authors raise some serious concerns about the MSC and other eco-labels, and several controversies have surfaced over MSC's work in recent weeks — and will have to wait until another day. (In the meantime, see Politics of the Plate, Good Magazine, The Tyee and Blogfish for coverage of some of the issues.)

New technology could help seafood buyers identify and trace their purchases. The scientists who wrote the paper on tuna DNA analysis in PLoS One conceive of a cell phone-sized device that could quickly determine the species of a piece of seafood, thus enabling individuals to confirm that they are getting what they expect. There is other, far less futuristic technology that could help: the more boring things known as bar codes and lot numbers, which could be put to much better use. For example, a restaurant could list the code for the fish on the menu and a diner could type that into their mobile device to find out more about its origin. In his excellent book about the fishing industry, "Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood," Taras Grescoe mentions that a Spanish anchovy canning company has been doing something like this with their product: each can has a code that can be entered into a website, which will then give you information about when the fish were caught, which boat was used, and so on.

Cast a wider net

The sustainable seafood counter at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco. (Photo by Kirsten Bourne/Bi-Rite)

Supermarkets buy and sell a lot of seafood, so their practices have substantial influence. In recent days, we have seen some positive actions by big retailers:

• Target has pledged to remove farmed salmon from its shelves
• Safeway has agreed to discontinue sales of three threatened fish (monkfish, red snapper and grouper) until populations have recovered (news release at Fishwise)
• The international processor High Liner Foods announced a strengthened collaboration with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (PDF)
• Food-service giant Compass Group implementing sustainable purchasing standards for farmed shrimp (news release).

Pledges are nice, but it is critical that when a company makes a pledge that it lives up to it. In 2006, Walmart promised to purchase all of their wild fish from MSC-certified fisheries by the end of 2010. (Marc Gunther covered the 2006 announcement for Fortune.) The authors suggest that Walmart is unlikely to meet its target. If Walmart fails to meet their pledge, the failure should become a publicity headache, one hopes.

The blame and shame game

For any company, its reputation is a valuable asset. And so, the authors point out that campaigns aimed at improving or demeaning a company's reputation can be effective. The list approach – the "10 Best Supermarkets for Sustainable Seafood" or the “10 Worst” – can be a good one. Companies that are concerned about their reputation will strive to move up the good list or get off of the bad list.

The new fish2fork project (from the people who brought you "The End of the Line" documentary; read the Ethicurean review) takes this approach, including Top 10 and Bottom 10 lists as well as ratings of individual restaurants. Reporter Jane Black covered fish2fork’s launch a few months ago at the Washington Post's food blog:

[Fish2fork founder and author Charles] Clover's hope is that bad publicity will inspire restaurants into changing the kind of seafood they serve and encouraging a dialogue about sustainability with customers. The release of the British edition of the guide in October sent an instant shudder through the white-tabled restaurants in London. Within months, endangered species such as bluefin tuna and Atlantic halibut disappeared from many menus. Raymond Blanc, chef of the elegant Manoir and a strong proponent of sustainability, was "apoplectic" that he received only half a blue fish, says Clover. Within a short period, he had remade the menu and posted his seafood sustainability policy online. He now has the top UK rating of four blue fish.

"Blanc is a huge proponent of organics and animal welfare. He had a policy, but he hadn't communicated it to his staff or his diners. He turned his whole business around. That's very impressive. That's our mandate," Clover said. [Emphasis mine]

Tools like fish2fork can be enhanced by social media like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the masses of networking methods that I've never even heard of, as they allow for rapid transmission of news and opinion.

Additionally, one-time stunts can be effective, like Greenpeace's "crime scenes" in Toronto, where a team of activists set up a crime scene in front of eight stores while delivering a message to the media and public about a market's sale of Red List seafood — ‘caught red-handed selling Red-List fish’ was their slogan. The stores quickly pledged to work with the MSC to improve their stocking practices.

It's a multi-level operation

As you can see, improvements can be made all along the seafood supply chain, from improved traceability to the source, to signage at the seafood counter in the supermarket, to social media. And many of these can be nudged by individuals, through sharp questioning of a server at a restaurant, a tweet of praise for a supermarket's initiative, or any number of actions. But some of the most effective solutions are going to be made on industry-wide and national levels. I'll look at those in Part 3.