Megan Rector
News Articles
Study offers lessons for Nova Scotia’s troubled pre-vetted aquaculture sites. Undercurrent News. 2024. By Liza Mayer.
Blog Posts
December 22, 2021
Seafood Watch, a sustainable seafood recommendation program, recently updated its sustainability ratings for Atlantic salmon farming regions. These updated ratings have been making news in Nova Scotia where Atlantic salmon raised in marine net pens has been upgraded from a red rating (avoid) to yellow (good alternative) according to Seafood Watch’s “traffic light” system. Meanwhile, [...]
November 22, 2021
A new Canadian ecolabel launched earlier this month that promotes winter wheat as a bird-friendly crop from the Canadian prairies. Winter wheat is planted in the fall and starts growing as soon as the weather allows in the spring, providing critical habitat for returning migratory waterfowl. This new ecolabel is a partnership between Cereals Canada and Ducks Unlimited Canada, but it isn’t the first agriculture ecolabel, [...]
September 28, 2021
Do you find buying sustainable seafood confusing? An increasing number of seafood sustainability certifications, labels, and consumer recommendation guides have appeared over the past three decades. Here is a quick guide to some of the most popular types of ecolabels you might find at the grocery store or on a restaurant menu. [...]
August 31, 2021
Seafood fraud has been making news this summer, first with a New York Times investigation into claims that Subway tuna sandwiches are made of “anything but tuna”, and then with a report from Oceana indicating high rates of seafood mislabeling in Canada. Both investigations were based on DNA sampling of seafood, from Subway in the case of the New York Times, and from restaurants and retailers in the case of Oceana. [...]
July 13, 2021
As the summer heats up and travel restrictions lift, more people are visiting the beach, going for a paddle or a coastal hike, or taking in an ocean view. There’s no question that people value those experiences, especially after a year of being stuck indoors. But can we quantify that value? How much are those experiences worth? [...]
June 8, 2021
Last month, the website Epicurious announced it would no longer publish recipes that include beef in their ingredient list “in an effort to encourage more sustainable cooking.” Specifically, the website cites the greenhouse gas emissions associated with beef production as the reason for cutting beef from its recipes. Alongside other recent trends like the rise of plant-based meat, [...]
May 11, 2021
As Nova Scotia entered another lockdown last month, we heard renewed calls to wash your hands, keep your distance, and stay the blazes home. Alongside those public health imperatives, we also heard a familiar call to action: support local businesses impacted by the shutdown. One in particular piqued my interest; my favourite local eatery was looking to offload its weekend shellfish order, calling on patrons to order live oysters for takeout. [...]
April 13, 2021
When you think of a farm, what do you picture? Wheat fields? A dairy farm? Chicken barns? What about a fish farm?
We’re eating more seafood than ever before, and it’s not just because there are more of us on the planet. Since the mid-twentieth century, seafood consumption has grown at twice the rate of population growth [...]
March 15, 2021
Have you ever noticed a little blue fish on your farmed seafood packaging, or on the glass at your grocer’s fish counter? Those little blue fish are known as “ecolabels” and they’re meant to provide consumers with assurance that the fish they are buying has been farmed sustainably. But what do they really tell us about sustainability? [...]