Protect our Food Source

As we prepare to sit down with our family and friends to celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, we should also take time to reflect on where the food on our table comes from. As the manager of a restaurant that focuses on locally-sourced foods, I know first-hand that buying local means that we must also work to preserve the natural systems that provide our food.

It is very important to me that I know the source of the food we serve--my customers demand that from me.  It is also important that the foods used in our kitchen are sustainably grown, raised, and caught.

The depletion of our ocean fish populations is a serious threat to Massachusetts fishermen, coastal communities, and business owners like me who rely on sustainable seafood for our livelihoods.  Decades of overfishing have left many in Massachusetts in a precarious economic position, unsure about their future. I think we all would agree that action must be taken to strengthen fisheries, improve the future of our fishing industry, and keep locally caught seafood on our plates.

Congress has the opportunity to help achieve these goals when it renews the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the leading federal law on managing federal fisheries.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act is working to accomplish two core conservation objectives: preventing the taking of more fish in a year than nature can replace—in other words, ending overfishing—and rebuilding depleted fish populations. To date, formerly depleted fish species, including haddock and Atlantic sea scallops, have been successfully rebuilt. This is great news to me because scallops are an important feature on our menu.  Our representatives in Washington should take this into consideration. We in the restaurant business want to continue to support our local fishermen, but we need Congress to step up and ensure we stay on the right track towards sustainable fish populations.

Some of our important species in New England, such as cod, are still in weak shape. But this is no reason to weaken the parts of the law that are working to bring those fish back. As fish populations continue to rebound, our federal representatives in Congress should reject proposals to delay or weaken conservation principles in the Magnuson-Stevens Act. There has been much talk recently from those who want to roll back the conservation provisions of the law. This would risk the hard-earned gains we have made to rebuild certain populations and effectively take us back to the days of rampant overfishing that devastated our fisheries in the first place. This is a shortsighted approach that would have huge and negative impacts on fisheries. Depleting our fisheries even further for short-term economic gain would be the final nail in the coffin for some of us. Instead, we must continue rebuilding our fisheries to healthy, sustainable populations in order to ensure that future generations can benefit from them.

We must be in this for the long haul. It takes time for fish to reach maturity and spawn, and time for decimated populations to rebuild.  But the long-term interests of fisherman, coastal business owners, and consumers are aligned on this issue: the future of healthy, productive, and profitable fisheries depends on wise, science-based management. That is why I urge Massachusetts’ U.S. senators and representatives to lead efforts to keep and strengthen the Magnuson-Stevens Act.