I have traveled around the country for the past two weeks with two Directors of the finest salmon farm in the world, Loch Duart Scottish Salmon. The receptions we received with new retail and restaurant customers was so very encouraging, the time spent addressing sustainable seafood issues with an overflow room of young to-be chefs at the leading American Culinary Institute in Napa was full of interest, challenges and resounding encouragement. Yet, meetings held with a few regional distribution gatekeepers in our seafood industry was just a hair's breadth from truly cynical, and then some.
It was on one hand refreshing to sit with one of our regional distributors of seafood and hear them very candidly acknowledge that the handful of so-called premium salmon brands that have emerged since CleanFish's starting up the category in 2004, were, in their words, a "scam", or a "joke", or a "pay-to-play deception". Still, they were clear that they would continue to participate in selling those fish under the commercial imperative of "giving the customer what s/he wants". The distributor, on the other hand, made clear that the burden of continuing to educate the marketplace regarding the 'real deal' stewardship premium fish of CleanFish, fell solely on us; even as they recognized the newly emerging "brand stories" and wide range of "third party certifiers" have served to confuse, crowd, and make it ever so much more difficult to get authenticity recognized in the marketplace.
To shift to a parallel situation for a reference point, the long standing albeit recently uncovered Volkswagen/Porsche/Audi engineered fraud serves to demonstrate how any smaller business operator would look upon the market s/he is working in and ask, "Who really cares?"
Here is VW, a giant corporation that had had its wrists slapped for a similar sabotaging of the emissions and mileage metrics in 1998 and again in 2003, that seemed only to have learned that they had to be more cleaver in order to not get caught. So, they formed a most cynical auto software code that permitted it to game the EPA and State agencies of California charged with guarding public environmental policies around carbon emissions. Do they not get Climate Change, or the human contributions charged with playing dangerously in our futures? Oh, and they had their further cynical insider joke heightened by marketing the product of this sabotage (snicker, wink) "Clean Diesel". VW/Porsche/Audi perpetrated this fraud for at least 6 years during which time they became the #1 Auto selling corporation in the world. So, it worked!
This is how some corporate strategist and finance/stock market analysts will read it, now: it worked. Barring momentary embarrassment they can pay their way out of with some clever ads, good for them. They are #1. It worked.
I had leased or bought several Audi models over the past 15 years. I am an eco-entrepreneur who only bought the last Audi A3 because -- as a Clean Diesel - it demonstrated that Audi was paying attention to customers like me who wanted to support positive eco-economic change and not contribute to negative environmental impacts as much a possible from whatever item I might buy; in this case a Clean Diesel car. So, I feel completely betrayed.
Further, I have a company in sustainable seafood, CleanFish, fish you can trust®. I truly feel VW's lying actions has potentially painted all "Clean..." brands with their coat of cynicism, as they have shown any business that makes such positive environmental claims should now be held ultra-suspect. I am physically sick to realize the power of such calculated, systemic, and marketing of pervasive fraud and its impact on the consumer market by such a previously trusted global brand. An executive business associate voiced surprise at my sense of outrage, stating that all most customers of VW's were interested in was price, the dealer throwing in mud flaps, and maybe mileage; but that "none knew much or gave a damn about carbon emission issues in reality".
I hope that business executive is very wrong. Just as I hope the commodity distributors in seafood that do not feel it is in their interest to be selling as premium only those leading producers they truly see as authentic innovators and responsible stewards in the harvesting and/or cultivation of superior seafood, are wrong.
What I hope they are wrong about is their view of the market they are selling into. I see markets full of customers desperate to see genuine connections between the sources and quality of real food production principles in the food they buy, serve, and eat. In the food market, including seafood, I see a meaningful Good Food Revolution hiding in plain sight. And I believe those who care and work with others who do, will win the day.
I hope and expect that more in the market will come to know that it is only we, us, who must seek to educate ourselves about the food we eat, purchase, sell and feed to our families. That we learn the full power we have when we "Vote with our Forks". And, I hope that executive jail time and a full 50%+ claw back of 6+ years of VW corporate profits are nailed for their outright fraud. If our government is not owned by corporations, it must show that while it may take time to catch them executive room decisions to consciously commit fraud, and to spew 4-8X more carbon than stated by their 'Truth in Engineering' slogan claims, is met with a public statement that such false corporate gains and False Engineering does not pay.
Let all markets and Boardrooms take note: Eco-Economics is key to the new Global Standards. Gaming environmental policy with insider cynicism, is not the path to take. It is, simply and directly, bad business.
Timothy o'Shea is CEO and co-Founder of CleanFish, fish you can trust®. Tim has been engaged in sustainable business practices with pioneers such as Natural Logic, Inc; The Natural Step; and a range of mission-driven companies for over 30 years. He is continuing work in and beyond seafood markets in a consulting entity, CleanStart Design Groupe, to work with Aquaculture 3.0, and integrated design-essential food innovators.