NEWS

Read Professor Cathy A. Roheim's recent interviews in SeafoodSource.com on:

Recent Conference Presentations

"Revealing Potential Demand for Ecolabeled Seafood in Japanese Markets."Seafood Summit 2010, Paris, France, January.

"Drivers and Market Trends of Third-Party Certified Aquaculture Products."Aquaculture America, 2010, San Diego, CA, March.

Recent Reports from the URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative

To evaluate Rhode Island consumers’ preferences for ecolabeling aquacultured seafood products, URI Sustainable Seafood Fellow Pratheesh O. Sudhakaran produced the report Ecolabeling of Seafood from Aquaculture: A Survey of Rhode Island Consumer Preferences. This report is based upon a survey of 250 Rhode Island seafood consumers. Results show that marketing Rhode Island aquaculture products could capitalize upon consumers’ preferences for supporting local farmers, who can provide fresh products, and have control over product attributes that protect the environment and product quality.

To evaluate the potential market for local seafood products within Rhode Island, URI Sustainable Seafood Fellow Sam Grimley produced the report Assessing the Market Potential for “Local” Seafood in Rhode Island: Qualitative Results of a Survey of Consumers’ Preferences and Perceptions. This report is based upon a survey of 200 attendees of farmers’ markets in Rhode Island during the summer of 2010 to learn more about what ‘local’ seafood means to them, and what factors would influence their purchase of such products, by species and product form. Research into this area is particularly timely given the increased interest in developing differentiated markets for such products.

A new study, Sustainability and Global Seafood, co-authored by URI Sustainable Seafood Initiative’s director Cathy A. Roheim in the journal Science, examined seafood’s contribution to global food security and challenges of ecosystem health. Seafood is one of the most highly traded foods internationally, offering significant health benefits and providing food and millions of jobs to more than 560 million people worldwide. Both developing and developed countries benefit from this market, but current policies regarding food distribution and ecosystem health need to create incentives for better governance and enhance seafood’s role in food security. The paper suggests policies that create economic incentives to invest in maintaining ecosystem health in the countries that capture or farm most seafood.

In An Evaluation of Sustainable Seafood Guides: Implications for Environmental Groups and the Seafood Industry, published in the journal Marine Resource Economics, Dr. Cathy A. Roheim analyzes the recommendations of several recent sustainable seafood guides for their consistency with one another. The results provide not only useful implications for the fisheries and aquaculture industries, but also provide suggestions for those in the seafood industry who are working directly with consumers struggling to make sense of the messages they are receiving. Also included are recommendations for environmental groups on ways which might help reduce the economic burden on the seafood industry while still pursuing the market-based approach to improving the ocean environment. The paper is based upon the detailed analysis contained in A Consensus Seafood Guide, found below.

Expected Benefits of Fisheries Certification: Results of a Survey of MSC Fisheries Clients What motivates fisheries to enter assessment for certification against the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard of sustainability? What expectations do fisheries have with respect to possible market and non-market benefits from certification? The research presented in this report is based on a survey of fisheries clients conducted in May and June 2009 by Cathy Roheim and Tarsila Seara to systematically gather answers to just such questions from the more than 100 fisheries certified and in the assessment process by the MSC.

The market for certified wood products: What can the seafood sector learn from the applied research? This report by Tarsila Seara is a brief literature review of published literature concerning the markets for certified wood products. The report characterizes what is known about market benefits from certification of forestry products, and consumer preferences for certified wood products. The goal is to provide insights for the seafood industry through lessons which may be learned from the forestry sector.

Illustration of U.S. Organic Agricultural Produce Price Premiums: Implications for Ecolabeled Seafood Price Premiums One of the frequent questions asked concerning seafood ecolabelling is whether or not the market actually does reward producers through price premiums for their products. Indicators of upper bounds on seafood ecolabel price premiums may be premiums that are being paid for organic agricultural products in the U.S. market. This report by Cathy A. Roheim and Ronald D'silva, prepared in June 2009, compiles results from several research reports which show organic price premiums paid in the U.S. market, at several levels of the market, for a large variety of agricultural products.

A Consensus Seafood Guide At the June 2008 meeting of the Sustainable Seafood Forum (SSF), the members of SSF requested that a consensus seafood guide be developed, based upon the numerous seafood guides currently in existence. With funding from Sam King, Michelle Armsby and Cathy Roheim of the University of Rhode Island Sustainable Seafood Initiative compiled the list contained within this document.