Blue Horizon Organic

  At a time when organic food and sustainable farming have become the latest buzz words and people are starting to care whether the chickens they’re buying are free range and beef cuts are from grass-fed cows, the idea of patronizing ocean-friendly seafood is also starting to gain popularity. Contrary to common knowledge, caring for the ocean is more than just about saving whales and dolphins. There are in fact a number of fish species commonly available in your neighborhood grocery stores and seafood restaurants which suffer from overfishing, pollution, and other ecological concerns. The United Nations says that 75 percent of the world’s wild fish stocks are already depleted or are recovering from depletion. Seafood generally has two sources: open water and fish farms. To say that one is better than the other would be oversimplifying the issue. A more accurate measure of eco-friendliness is to assess the methods of how a species is caught or raised. Using trawl nets, for instance,...

  In today’s market it is becoming more and more difficult to pick organic. As saving money has become a bigger concern, the decision to be organic is a money issue instead of a health issue. To help with the decision you should know which foods you should be ready to spend the money on because of your health, and which you can make a monetary decision on. When you are deciding on which fruits and vegetables the worst for pesticides are peaches and strawberries. No matter how much you wash them, they are saturated with poisons, so if you can’t afford to buy the organic strawberries and peaches, select something else. Choose organic apples, nectarines, raspberries, pears, grapes and cherries; studies have shown that after rinsing, they still have really high levels of pesticide. If you are using orange, lime, or lemon zest, you want organic, as the skin holds the poisons in them. When you are looking at papaya, pineapple, mango, and kiwi you can make it a monetary choice. Although t...

  Seafood harvests are considered sustainable when managed in a such a way that landings do not deplete stocks beyond their ability to reproduce and rebuild population levels. Another key aspect of sustainability is a consideration of bycatch or environmental damage that is associated with harvesting the product. Several laws in the USA and abroad have had profound impacts on seafood sustainability issues. The Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 established a U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) between 3 and 200 miles offshore, and created eight regional fishery councils to manage the living marine resources within that area. The bill was amended on October 11, 1996 and re-named the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Act was passed principally to address heavy foreign fishing, promote the development of a domestic fleet and link the fishing community more directly to the management process. Each Council was directed to prepare fishery ...

Today, many consumers are very ‘label conscious.’ Instead of simply grabbing whatever product happens to be the first they see on the shelf, many are taking the time and making an effort to really get to know the products they are using and buying. From organic food to ‘green’ dry cleaning, once a person really stops for a moment and pays attention to the impact on the Earth of even the most mundane activities, it’s a good enough reason to start looking for environmentally conscious products. One such example is sustainable seafood, but exactly what is sustainable seafood? In order to be labeled as sustainable, a seafood source must maintain or increase the population of the seafood species, and must not negatively impact ecosystems where the seafood species is harvested, amongst other tenets. This sounds great on a label and is of course a great start. Overfishing and fishing methods that destroy natural ecosystems are both fast ways to extinction of not only seafood species’ populati...