I love Toro Sashimi and every time I have the opportunity, I indulge myself with more than one piece of this Japanese culinary delicacy. There are however a few things I didn’t consider when savoring my delicious chunk of fatty tuna.

Most of the tuna that we eat in the Bay Area comes from the port town of General Santos City in Southern Philippines, one of the world’s great tuna-fishing ports. The best tuna will sell for about $700 wholesale. After being cleaned and put in dry ice it takes the 10.30 a.m. flight to Manila. The next day, the fish will be in Tokyo, Seattle of California.

So think about the Carbon footprint my nice and delicious little piece of sushi left behind. And it doesn’t end here, in September the European Commission recommended that the European Union support a temporary suspension of the global trade of Atlantic Bluefin tune. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates that Alantic Bluefin that spawn in the Mediterranean could disappear from those waters as early as 2012. As you might have guessed the ban was shot down by E.U. members with high stakes in the tuna trade.

Scientists believe stocks of southern bluefin around Australia have probably fallen more than 90% since 1950 and could continue to drop.

In order words the amount of tuna we are consuming worldwide is not sustainable and  the consequences of not having tuna in our oceans could be disastrous for the ocean ecosystem and probably many economies.

So next time I go for sushi I might choose an alternative dish, probably Corn Sushi. With nice supersweet corn grown in the Northwest of the USA.

We can make a difference, one mouth at the time… Leave some of that delicious tuna to your great-grandchildren.

Technorati Tags: Tuna, Sustainable, Carbon Footprint

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