Chef Joe Monteiro pledges to help baby seals by signing on to Harpseals.org’s petition.
Miami Beach, FL – According to the Humane Society of the United States, more than 317,000 seals were slaughtered for their fur in Canada last year alone; chefs, — like Miami Beach-based Joe Monteiro of A Fish Called Avalon — restaurants and grocers are boycotting Canadian seafood hoping the clubbing ends.
“It’s been going on for 20 years,” Chef Monteiro explained, “but I hadn’t heard anything for the past 10 or 15 years. Then a girl came to my office with a petition and told me it’s pretty bad. They skin the seals alive!”
The Humane Society of the United States, along with Harpseals.org, Respect for Animals, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and other organizations, is requesting that anyone with a wallet and a need for seafood reconsiders before buying Canadian product. “You can stand with us to stop the largest commercial slaughter of marine mammals on the planet,” the Humane Society’s Web site states: “Sign our pledge and tell the Canadian government that you won’t buy any Canadian seafood until the hunt is over for good. We'll deliver your pledge to Canada's government so the politicians will know you've joined our international ‘Protect Seals’ team to end this awful hunt.”
Though the chef said he wasn’t recently aware of the seal killings, the issue has been receiving a lot of press lately. In March Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills made a trip to the Canadian ice floes and Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island to investigate the issue first-hand. (Provinces involved in the hunt also include Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Quebec.)
When they returned, they were so horrified by what they saw that they started their own media campaign, which including an appearance on Larry King Live. They also contacted Tony Blair’s office.
It’s a fishy business
Boycotts, protests and animal endangerments are not unusual happenings in Chef Monteiro’s line of work, and he is no stranger to the effect they have on market conditions. When ordering food each week, he encounters price fluctuations that are sometimes staggering; but none of them are without justification. “Like sea bass. I don’t serve it,” he explains. “They catch 60 million pounds of it a year in Chile, but then they tell us that the population isn’t over-fished. More than half of those bass have never reproduced once. They say there is too much sea bass in the sea. It’s just not true.
“And I expect cod to be extinct by 2020,” he adds. “Fifteen years ago, cod cost $1.30 a pound. Now it’s $7.95. Swordfish was like that 15 years ago.
“Prices are going nuts on seafood in general. A lot of it has to do with the bird flu. The Asian population is snatching up a lot of fish.”
Change for the better
Canada’s fisheries sell lobster, snow crabs, cod, mackerel, scallops, shrimp, haddock, oysters, herring, perch, mussels, sole, yellow perch, sardines, flounder, trout, tuna, whitefish and swordfish. Fortunately, though the menu at A Fish Called Avalon changes regularly, it rarely offers any of the aforementioned products. Instead, the chef regularly serves Florida lobster and swordfish and scallops from Alaska. Plus he flies much of his fish in from Hawaii.
The one change he will make, however, is to offer black mussels instead of the ever-popular P.E.I.s he served in the past. “I sell a hundred pounds of mussels a week,” the chef explained. “I can’t stop serving it. The black mussels have a different taste, and they’re smaller and they spawn quicker—they go bad pretty quick. About a four-day shelf life on those. But I’m trying to support a cause, so I’ll do what I have to do. U.S.A. has to step up to the plate.”
###
Media Contact:
Krista Zilizi
Quantified Marketing Group
706-627-3204
407-936-1010
kzilizi@quantifiedmarketing.com
|
|
|
