Dear Mr. McGrory:

I write to take issue with a piece by Lisa Zwirn on seafood sustainability [How ocean-friendly is your canned tuna?; 5/26] which contains a number of serious journalism flaws and omissions.  Here are the specifics:

Ms. Zwirn first contacted one of our member companies, Bumble Bee, for input in April.  Although the company responded promptly with more than 600 words on the record from its CEO, the resulting piece cherry-picked just three adjectives and ignored the rest.  How did that shortchanging get past editors, especially in a piece that purports to be about tuna industry practices?

Although NFI is the primary trade organization representing the whole seafood industry, which Ms. Zwirn well knows, we were never contacted at all for input or opportunity to respond to the Greenpeace publicity.  If the Globe is going to provide activist groups fulsome space to trumpet their accusations, ones for which the resulting articles are an integral part of their fundraising operations, is it expecting too much that the people those groups target have an opportunity to reply for the record?

Another symptom of how Ms. Zwirn indulges Greenpeace is that they are presented with virtually no skepticism or scrutiny — not on their ideology, nor their methodology, nor their expertise, nor the feasibility or consequences of the demands they make.  Here are some easily confirmed facts, for instance, that might have been shared with readers:

• The methodology Greenpeace uses is entirely subjective, kept confidential, and unverifiable. They have precisely zero experience in fisheries management and the “seafood project leader” Ms. Zwirn cites repeatedly has actually spent his career in labor organizing, and joined Greenpeace only recently.

• Because of Greenpeace’s irresponsible and unaccountable approach, 90 percent of the tuna industry refused to take any part in the survey that Greenpeace claims is the centerpiece of its research.  In other words, they have no idea what they are talking about and the results are essentially made up.  But instead of examining that, Ms. Zwirn permits Greenpeace’s “expert” to blithely declare, “We know best practices and they’re not using them.”  That isn’t reporting, it’s stenography.

• Greenpeace has conducted no environmental impact studies on the pole-and-line methods they insist on.  Those methods would drastically increase carbon emissions, worsening the very environmental impacts Greenpeace claims to oppose.  Similarly, they have done no economic analysis of what that method would mean for consumer prices of canned tuna.  Currently, canned tuna is one of the most affordable sources of nutritious protein but in the alternative universe that Greenpeace demands, it would be sharply more expensive to produce.

There is indeed an important conversation to be had about seafood sustainability and its one that we engage in with the public every day.  It’s also why we take part in the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (as do a number of NGO’s), the world’s leading organization on this issue — and a group that Greenpeace refuses to engage and publicly regards with contempt.  But Ms. Zwirn’s article does little to advance that discourse and, as a result, does a disservice to readers who deserve an honest and balanced conversation. Instead it’s an obvious publicity bandwagon for Greenpeace’s fundraising operation, one which fuels a $300 million per year operating budget.

I would like to ask for some explanation for how reporting this slanted and credulous got past supervising editors and what corrective measures the paper might take to prevent it happening again.

Sincerely,

Brandon F. Phillips
Sr. Director, Communications and Advocacy
National Fisheries Institute (NFI)