| Roy Palmer, executive director, Association of International Seafood Professionals |
If we are to change the world and get more people eating seafood then we need so much in our favour. One of the major problems is the need for consumer confidence and to correct perceptions in the mainstream media.
I have just had the experience of being in Vietnam and if ever there was an example to exemplify this issue then Vietnam and its seafood is it.
But first I must relate to something that happened on LinkedIn through our Association page discussions. It is the perfect combination of urgency and principles when looking at extremely poor journalism. The thing we must do is to attack that and embarrass the people involved in the hopes that they will not err again.
We were alerted to an article (I will not publicise it as it does not need more airing but you can follow the postings in the LinkedIn discussions) which basically blamed seafood imported in USA for much of the foodborne illnesses that Americans suffer each year. It was suggested by one of our members, Todd Wendt that we should all communicate with the journalist (?) and let her know our feelings to the poorly researched article. Many members of the Association did this and some contacted the publisher, Scripps media, to ensure they were aware of the inaccuracies.
In her defence the author replied “the article is referenced to Food & Water Watch, multiple times. It's a non-profit in America that does this research. It's not so my research, it's research conducted by the non-profit in which I reported on so I suggest instead of taking your frustrations out on me, you take it up with Food & Water Watch. It's just my job to report what I find.”
It was pointed out quite strongly that promoting fiction as fact was not a good idea.
The issue was further exasperated by another article written in a US Professional fishing magazine which attempted to defend USA produced seafood.
As another Association member, Matt Briggs, pointed out this article was totally biased (after rightly calling for balance from the previous author) as it went on to say that all domestic American seafood is good and sustainable, and, by inference, only filthy nasty fish from outside America is bad and unsustainable. That is nonsense!
Matt stressed what I have often said – the seafood industry is own worst enemy when it comes to knocking seafood. Matt said ‘remember what happened when the US catfish industry tried to differentiate between (lovely, clean and healthy) US produced catfish, and (nasty, filthy unhealthy and not really catfish at all) Vietnamese catfish? Everyone lost out as all catfish was tarred with the same brush in the consumers mind.’
Anyway back to Vietnam. We had a great Marketing session at Asian Pacific Aquaculture 13 in Ho Chi Minh City where well over 2000 people attended over the 3 days of the conference and trade show.
In the session the aim was to try and set the scene of where we are today and to see how we can improve into the future. I set the scene highlighting how people come to Vietnam for a holiday and when asked what was special about the holiday they generally remark on how great and reasonably priced the food was, especially the seafood. Of that there can be no doubt from my own experiences.
When these people get home the ‘Product of Vietnam’ sign at the fish counter is not an issue but seemingly to some journalists it is like a red flag to a bull! Strange but true. I highlighted how Vietnam had suffered from various PR attacks which had mainly been promoted by others in our industry – we are our worst enemy for sure.
Professor David Hughes had the audience in the palm of his hand as he highlighted the problems of being a commodity driven product comparing Chicken with Pangasius then Dr. Nguyen Huu Dzung from VASEP explained what their plans for the future were and the event was nicely completed by Norm Grant, chairman of the Seafood Importers Association of Australalia, who gave a run down on the Brand Vietnam that was happening in Australia.
All this highlights is that seafood operators are not each other’s enemy – the enemy is chicken, pork, beef, lamb, etc. and that we all need to grasp that strongly and work together. We need to defend the whole industry and understand that if we denigrate any seafood that we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Let us all work together to lift consumer confidence – we cannot do that unless we have each other’s backs!
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