

Website tracks seafood dinners back to fishermen - aleger
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/07/01/ns-thisfish-tracks-diner-to-water.html

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mw63214
As food prices rise, I have a feeling that local food will become less a
lifestyle statement, and more of an economic necessity. A natural progression
from political statement -> lifestyle statement -> sustainability -> local
economic choice -> health choice -> personal economic choice. I believe we're
at the point between sustainability and local economic choice. As local food
becomes more competitive with big supermarkets and big agribusiness, I think
there is a huge market/margins for start-ups, logistics, and added value.

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sixtofour
I was wishing for something like this the other day, for fruit. I was in the
produce section of my grocer's, and wondering where these berries and apples
came from, and if they were in season or forced.

Ideally I'd like to be able to track back everything I eat that doesn't come
in a package.

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thret
Seems impractical on a large scale, but it would make situations like the
e.coli outbreak in Germany much easier to manage.

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dhughes
Lays potato chips are doing that too, between the potatoes and seafood a lot
of it may lead back here to this region of farmers and fishermen.

It may be an incentive to make sure the food is fresh, it could be great
publicity when it goes well or bad when someone has something against an area
due to pollution or politics.

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adolph
Reminds me of a Portlandia episode:

[http://www.hulu.com/watch/208808/portlandia-ordering-the-
chi...](http://www.hulu.com/watch/208808/portlandia-ordering-the-chicken-
part-1)

~~~
mw63214
hah, I thought of that episode also. Such a great show.

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auston
You could probably build something like with Flomio - but make it available at
the grocery store, on your phone?

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jmadsen
what we need - one more reason to jump on our smart phones during dinner with
friends or family :-P

(I DO see the "cool factor", but still..)

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maeon3
As human population on earth increases to 10b, 20b, 40b on the surface of
Earth we will need better tracking software of how many fish to catch to
maximize the number of fish to be caught. Catch too few, and you miss out,
catch too many and you decrease the reproducing population. That number needs
to be calculated.

Real time tracking like this could be used to monitor the fluctuations in the
rates of fish populations, entered into databases, so we can figure out the
exact number of fish we can catch sustainably.

Opensource this data, and let the open market process it, someone will write
an algorithm to maximize the number of fish the Earth can produce in a given
year. Then the government will "absorb" that system, and we can build a
sustainable Earthwide fish management process. all the oceans are linked, and
multiple governments will have to coordinate. It is the "Tragedy of the
commons".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>

~~~
Joakal
I don't think the data can solve it due to requiring to collect data on
everything. The website is successful due to high price to goods ratio
(lobster, big fish). It would be hard to track something like sardines for
example.

I believe the better way is to introduce regulation that makes the distinction
between hunting fish and farming fish. Hunted fish would be taxed to the
extent that farmed fish would be cheaper (taxes go to making farmed fish
cheaper, eg research or subsidies).

A similar regulation scheme is being implemented for taxing carbon emissions
of electricity producers in favour for renewables. I've also proposed
something akin to this for selling native animals in Australia in the bid to
fight extinction [0].

[0] [http://joakal.com/2011/06/28/animal-capitalist-
conservation-...](http://joakal.com/2011/06/28/animal-capitalist-conservation-
or-non-native-tax/)

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Tichy
I recently saw a documentary about some farmed fish that gets fed shredded
hunted seafood - everything the fishers haul from the sea, it gets poured into
a gigantic shredder and fed to that farm fish. There was a representative of
some green organization who almost cried when she saw that, as it is such a
huge waste of bio diversity.

Just saying that farming fish does not necessarily solve problems. And if the
hunted fish is not being sold, but turned into food for farmed fish, it might
be difficult to tax.

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fnazeeri
Every piece of meat should have a picture (video?) of it being slaughtered...

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burgerbrain
What of ground beef? Pretty impractical for my packet of hamburgers to come
with a phonebook of pictures of cows.

