Fish2Fork Rates European McDonald’s Over French Chefs
Who would have guessed, but in Europe it appears that McDonald’s is outshining the finest French restaurants when it comes to promising to serve sustainable fish.
In recent reporting by Fish2Fork—the website conceived by Charles Clover, author of the book End of the Line, on which the provocative documentary of the same name about overfishing was based—only 23 percent of French fish restaurants earned four “blue fish” (out of a possible five), while 70 percent rated five “red fish skeletons,” its lowest rating.
Photo: Charles Platiau/Reuters
In the same breath, the site reports that McDonald’s has signed a guarantee that the 100 million servings of its Filet-O-Fish sandwich sold in 39 countries as part of its European operation will come from sustainable sources. The guarantee is taken seriously enough that the prestigious U.K.-based Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) awarded the company the right to carry its blue-flag MSC label, a highly sought eco-certification.
The deal begins in October and involves 7,000 restaurants that attract 13 million customers a day. (There are more than 32,000 McDonald’s globally, with nearly 14,000 of them in the U.S.)
Fish2Fork was forged from Glover’s experience with both book and movie, which graphically illustrate how man has taken or overexploited 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks. The site’s goal is to rate restaurants around the globe on how they’re doing when it comes to being knowledgeable about and serving sustainably caught or grown fish.
The listings on its site are based on questionnaires filled out by the restaurants themselves or on online menus. The goal is to better educate both restaurateurs and consumers alike.
In France, the highest-ranked restaurant surveyed was Paris’ Epi Dupin, where chef/owner Francois Pasteau reacted to learning about the crisis of overfishing by buying fish from the market twice a week and skipping over anything considered at risk. Fish2Fork calls him a “true national hero.”
On the downside, Fish2Fork also found restaurants in France blithely selling critically endangered European eel, wild caviar from Caspian sturgeon, and endangered bluefin tuna on skewers. In some restaurants, servers knew exactly where the pigeon on the menu came from or the specific breed of beef it served, but had no idea where its cod came from.
“What future are we creating for the next generations of French chef if many species of wild fish become a thing of the past and come off the menu because we have let them go practically extinct in the wild?” wondered Glover.
The European McDonald’s, by comparison, will focus on buying cod from the Barents Sea and Eastern Baltic, haddock also from the Barents, Alaskan pollock, and hoki from New Zealand.
The biggest concern regarding the McDonald’s promise is what happens if/when the company can’t get its hands on enough sustainable fish? Where will it turn if demand outpaces supply? Some environmentalists have been critical of the MSC certification because of all the bycatch (including seabirds and seals) resulting from the sizable industrial catches necessary to satisfy McDonald’s appetite.
In Europe the chain has decided its customers will respond to its doing the right thing. For the time being, its 14,000 U.S. brethren are treading water a bit longer before taking the hook.
(For the rest of my dispatches, go to takepart.com)
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