If you’re unfamiliar with MSU Greenpeace, we are students who work with Greenpeace headquarters to organize to peacefully protest and encourage creative communications to expose the onslaught of global and environmental issues caused by companies at home and abroad.
MSU Greenpeace and MSU Culinary Services met Jan. 20 to continue efforts in switching the university’s tuna provider. MSU relayed they hope to switch the provider by the next purchase in June.
MSU would join the likes of University of California, Davis as one of the first universities to make this momentous switch toward sustainability.
The current provider, StarKist, is notorious for their “out of sight, out of mind” practices.
Although they preach sustainability and boast a “dolphin friendly” label on their cans, the company is guilty of committing destruction to countless habitats, depleting marine resources and murdering helpless species.
Fish aggregating devices, or FADs, are optically pleasing buoys dropped into the ocean to lure in tuna species, to make for faster, cheaper and easier tuna harvesting.
However, these lines are responsible for luring in other unintended marine life, such as sharks, sea turtles and other fish populations, causing an unjust end to these creatures that are caught in the mix, known as by-catch.
Unsustainable methods of harvesting are contributing to global fisheries issues of overfishing, which is responsible for the bluefin tuna population to drop 96 percent in the Pacific Ocean, since three quarters of the world’s fish stock are harvested faster than they are replenished. With the market churning out this much catch, global fisheries could collapse by 2050.
MSU Greenpeace advocates against companies like StarKist and unsustainable fishing methods such as the use of FADs, in order to keep our markets and oceans alive and well. MSU Greenpeace recommends the use of sustainable products such as those from Costco’s Kirkland Skipjack Tuna or Wild Planet, which support methods of harvesting such as pole-and-line catching. Until we receive an affirmative answer, MSU’s Greenpeace team will continue to put forth efforts in encouraging dining services sustainable switch. We plan to keep folks posted with more information as soon as it is available. If tuna can, we can!
To support the cause, search “MSU Tuna” on Change.org.
Neal Page is a communications sophomore at MSU and Jessica Wolfe is an LCC student. Both are members of MSU Greenpeace.
