Extra Credit: Campaign for the fishies

Extra Credit:

Because it is the issue I probably have the most problems with in my own life, I want to do a campaign on sustainable fishing practices in the US—knowing where your fish came from, making sustainable fish easier to purchase, and raising awareness around the issue and changing purchasing habits along those lines. So! Here we go!
1. Campaign Purpose: To make sustainable fish options more readily available and increase base level knowledge in consumers about the issues circulating sustainable fishing.
2. Campaign Focus: Push grocery stores and suppliers to offer more sustainable options (and advertise the options that were not produced sustainably)
3. Target Audience: I think that my target audience would be the grocery stores and those that actually supply the food to consumers. Changing the options presented to consumers changes their purchases. So changing the options given to consumers via grocers would be my focus. My secondary audience would be the consumers themselves. Because it seems likely that very few people actually know about the fishing problems or about the levels of antibiotics given to fish or understand the difference between “farmed” and “wild” and when to buy which. The goal of my secondary audience would be to educate them about the food choices they are making so that they would know to vote with their wallet.
4. Competition: As always would be the status quo and lower prices. “If you can get 200% more salmon from farms at much cheaper prices then why wouldn’t you??” My competition would definitely be the pure economic model of finances that says profit is the only thing worth aspiring for.
5. Objective: To get grocers to offer greener fish options I feel that there would have to be an evolutionary process. First in presenting the issue to grocers and giving them reasons for presenting these options to the consumer. We’d then need to see the receptiveness of grocers in offering these options, what was keeping them from doing so already, how we could overcome those barriers, and what consumers would need to give them in return (most likely a louder voice asking for sustainable options). This would then give us a better idea for how to phase this progress in. However, it is likely that various options, from a blurbs by the fish stand about where the fish comes from, advertizing the fish they already purchase and which of those already available options are sustainable, and actually shifting purchasing habits towards sustainable options, would all have to be presented as various options for change. Lastly, raising awareness about these issues within the consumer through advertisements and information at the fish mongers would likely produce a greater push for grocers to buy more sustainable options as consumers would then start voting with their wallets.
Expanding the scope of this issue a little wider there is reason to believe that going a legal route (while much slower) could also be fruitful and would address a greater population. The FDA has reason to be concerned with the antibiotics pumped into farmed fish and the processes used to acquire and ship such large quantities of fresh fish. More research is coming out that some of the toxins in the ocean are bio-accumulating which poses a threat for human health. There is also reason to believe that bringing legislation to the House that deals with access to information on the source of one’s food needs to be more predominantly displayed. Such legislation would be important to both the food lobby and climate change issues and could potentially be a progressive step forward to claiming back our plates.
6. Marketing Mix: Giving grocers various options I think is important in presenting this information to them in a readable way that would keep them more open minded to the idea of change. Advertising to the consumer about the issues of sustainable fishing is also important in creating a change. By having advertisements on grocery carts and right by the fish mongers, you are keeping the information in their face at the time when they’re making the key decisions, making them more likely to make the sustainable decision. This then gives grocers more incentive to offer more options along the sustainable line. Because a social shift on a scale as large as the American consumer takes time, a large budget, and many avenues of access this would have to involve the education of the general public on sustainability issues through literature, news reports, and advertisements
7. Implementation: As discussed in the objectives section, this would come after discovering the barriers to the grocery stores, but I feel that it would be a slow phase in that would take several years to implement but I believe it would go in the order of advertizing current sustainable options, increasing education about sustainable fish, building a demand for sustainable fish, and getting more sustainable fish available.
8. Evaluation: No success would be marked by no change in education levels or options available to the consumer; Partial success would be having some literature available, and some initiatives that identify sustainable practices (such as asking the fish monger) but not having the information readily available without request and having some new sustainable options available (or more options being advertized as sustainable), and Success would be a shift in actions towards sustainable purchase and greater education about the issues.