You want safe shrimp to eat; restaurant owners want a good product to sell; chefs want delicious ingredients from which to create a winning menu; and domestic shrimpers need our business to survive as an industry. It’s one big circle – and our choices in one area impact others. This circle was made obvious by voices raised in New Orleans at the 2008 Women Chefs and Restaurateurs National Conference.

The attending women were eager to hear from Food & Water Watch, who sent me to get out the word about the health and environmental price of cheap imported shrimp. Chefs and restaurants got tips and important information about how they can improve their shrimp purchasing practices in the panel, "There’s Something About Shrimp."

 "The only way to make sure that we are getting safe seafood and that we continue to have a domestic industry to supply us with it is to shift demand. "

A lot is at stake for shrimp, and audience members got a well-rounded perspective on the issue from our esteemed panel. Panelists included moderator Leigh Belanger from the Chef’s Collaborative, local New Orleans shrimper Ray Brandhurst, chef of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, Tory McPhail, and Brennan Group operations head Haley Bitterman.

Giant shrimp buffets and growing portion sizes are just two reasons why demand for cheap, imported shrimp has grown immensely (learn more in our report Suspicious Shrimp). The safer, sustainable domestic shrimpers have lost and gone out of business. In addition, natural disasters such as hurricanes have wreaked havoc on shrimpers' boats and the industry’s infrastructure.

Ray, an innovative entrepreneur, talked about how the direct-purchasing relationships that he established with local restaurants have kept him afloat. He’s even begun shipping his shrimp directly to restaurants throughout the country via FedEx.

The overarching message from the panel was clear – eat domestic shrimp. The only way to make sure that we are getting safe seafood and that we continue to have a domestic industry to supply us with it is to shift demand. And we all have a part to play in that – whether we’re consumers, shrimpers, or chefs. To find out more about industrially produced shrimp and why you may want to avoid it, check out our Suspicious Shrimp report.

olive oil
parsley
potatoes
a little garlic
lemon juice
pepper

These are some of the ingredients contestants are adding to showcase seafood in scrumptious sounding dishes submitted to our Get Cookin' Sustainable Seafood Recipe Contest.

We've got $250 to give away for the recipe that tickles us and our taste buds the most. All the top entries win a Food & Water Watch Chef's apron and have their recipes published in our Get Cookin' Sustainable Seafood Recipe Booklet.

Who are the lucky judges? In addition to Food & Water Watch staff, locally renowned chef Rocky Barnette will be evaluating the finalists' submissions based on the following criteria:

• Taste
• Uniqueness
• Healthiness
• Simplicity 

Bonus points are given for using sustainable/local ingredients.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the ever-growing number of choices at the grocery store.  As consumers become more aware of how what they choose to eat influences their health, the environment, and their community, supermarket shelves are increasingly crowded with products claiming to be “sustainable” or “organic.”  But when it comes to fish, these labels can be confusing and hard to interpret, since an official set of U.S. standards for quality seafood has not yet been developed.  In an effort to address this problem, Whole Foods Market recently created its own standards to promote cleaner, greener and safer seafood.
 
Food & Water Watch strongly supports this decision to help protect the environment and assist consumers in making responsible choices, but we have some suggestions as to how the Market can improve the standards to make them successful and effective.  First, net pen and flow through aquaculture should be eliminated, as these production techniques are wasteful and environmentally damaging.  A second important revision is to establish a deadline by which producers must meet at least a 1:1 fish in, fish out ratio, which describes the amount of wild fish that a farm uses to make feed relative to the amount of fish it ultimately produces.  Any farm that does not meet this ratio is depleting wild fish populations, which can cause irreversible harm to both the individual species used to make fish food and ecosystems that depend on them.  Third, the standards should favor domestic and local suppliers as well as those farms that use re-circulating aquaculture, all of which benefit the environment and consumers.  Lastly, Whole Foods must set and enforce a timeline by which the standards are to be met.  If the Market allows companies to continue operating below the standards indefinitely, it will effectively be misleading consumers about the seafood Whole Foods carries and providing producers with little incentive to change.
 
To find out more about Food & Water Watch’s recommendations and why these provisions are important, check out the letter we sent to Whole Foods Market’s CEO and regional directors.  Whole Foods is taking an important lead on improving the seafood it offers to consumers every day, and with our recommendations, you may soon be able to buy fish with confidence that you are getting a safe and environmentally responsible product.

- Darcy White
email

Angelina Jolie has been receiving a lot of press, be it regarding her relationship with Brad Pitt, her newest children, or, most recently, her post-pregnancy diet. At first glance Angelina seems to have picked the perfect diet to optimize health, taste, and sustainability; it sounds delicious and includes key nutritional buzz words such as “Omega-3”, “organic”, and “fresh”.  But hold off on running to the store to copy her menu.  “Organic” seafood does not exist in the United States, and although standards have been developed in Europe, they are not what U.S. consumers expect from organic foods.

For a food to qualify as organic in the United States, it must be certified as meeting specific standards set by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  With produce, meat, and dairy, the term signifies that the product is not genetically modified, irradiated, and has not been produced with pesticides. The spirit of organic includes production methods that are also environmentally responsible. Seafood, however, is difficult to regulate, as it is impossible to monitor and control the substances that wild fish are exposed to.  In the face of this complexity, USDA has not yet developed standards for certifying any seafood as organic.  You may find fish products boasting organic labels, but these labels are not official and have relatively little meaning.  Official USDA labels may appear soon, as the National Organic Standards Board is discussing criteria for organic seafood, but they are struggling to develop appropriate standards. 

There are organic standards in the European Union.  Is this just a case of the EU being ahead of the game?  Unfortunately, in this case, not at all.  The European organic standards are fairly vague and incomplete, failing to protect either consumer health or the environment.  They don’t prohibit open water aquaculture, neglect to regulate pollution and waste, permit the use of some chemicals and drugs, and allow wild-caught fish to be used in fish feed.  These practices are not clean, green or safe.

If we can’t trust the labels, how are we to decide what seafood to buy?  Ask important questions of your restaurants and markets:

• Where is it from? (Domestic or imported – try to choose domestic).

• Is it caught or farmed locally? (Try to choose local foods over those shipped from far away).

• Is it farmed or wild? (Try to choose wild, unless the farming system is known to be clean, green and safe)

• How is it caught? (Ask if the method has high bycatch or habitat damage).

• How is it farmed? (When available, buy seafood that has been farmed in the U.S. in indoor, recirculating facilities. Tilapia, shrimp, hybrid striped bass and arctic char are examples of fish that are or are soon to be farmed this way).

• Is it associated with any contaminants? (Mercury, PCBs, antibiotics, etc).
  

Another tip is to diversify consumption – eating a variety of fish helps to prevent overfishing of specific species.
                       
So, my advice to Angelina and anyone else concerned about making responsible food choices is as follows: don’t be fooled by marketing hype.  Ask questions and educate yourself about the products before you buy.  By choosing seafood that is clean, green, and safe, you will not only be protecting yourself and your family, you will help ensure the sustainability of our ocean resources for generations to come.

- Darcy White

email

The food industry is wild about developing innovative ways to maximize the efficiency of producing food from animals.  Cows are injected with hormones and antibiotics and are pumped full of food that they are not naturally adapted to digest in order to speed up their growth.  Similarly, as recently reported in a Washington Post blog, many tilapia are given a dose of methyl testosterone to convert them all to males, which grow to a bigger size and require less feed because they don’t need to expend as much energy developing reproductive organs. Proponents argue that the practice reduces waste, thereby benefiting the environment.

It seems, however, that many people, myself included, don’t want food that has been altered with substances that change its basic biology. But, one may argue, if we can increase production with technology, it would be a shame not to.  The problem with this reasoning is that new technologies often bring unexpected consequences.  We don’t know enough about the effects of testosterone on the fish or the environment to conclusively determine if it is good or bad.  This would not be the first time that a new food industry practice is later found to create major environmental and health problems.  I probably don’t need to remind you all of how using pulverized parts of cows in animal feed, which was intended to bulk up the animals with protein, led to cases of mad cow disease. 

Most consumers don’t want food produced with added hormones. And while it may seem like an environmentally friendly practice now, we don’t know the long-term consequences. Given the many unknowns regarding methyl testosterone, the tilapia industry should not be so quick to embrace its use simply as a means to increase production.

During the last year and a half, we have been overloaded with non–stop reminders about numerous imported seafood safety problems. This opened consumers' eyes to the fact that the majority of the seafood that we eat is imported from Asia and Latin America, regions that have potentially unsafe production practices. Claiming to have discovered the solution to U.S. reliance on imported seafood, NOAA and the Bush administration are promoting legislation that would allow federal ocean waters to be leased out for industrial fish farming (aka offshore aquaculture, open water aquaculture, or open ocean aquaculture).

Offshore aquaculture involves cramming thousands of potentially high-value fish, such as cobia and cod, into large cages in U.S. federal waters –– between three and 200 miles from shore. These ocean equivalents of the land-based factory farms that jam together thousands of pigs, chickens, and cows could threaten the marine environment, human health, wild fish populations, and local fishermen and coastal communities.

Such operations can pollute the surrounding marine environment with fish waste, excess fish feed, and chemicals. Cramped conditions that cause higher stress than in the wild can make farmed fish prone to diseases and parasites, which would likely be treated with antibiotics, pesticides, and other chemicals. Both the diseases and chemicals can be transmitted to wild fish through the open net pens. Wild fish populations can also be harmed when farmed fish escape from their pens and compete for resources or interbreed and weaken the wild genetic stock.

Not only is the push for offshore aquaculture reckless, its purported benefits are highly questionable. The administration’s campaign for ocean fish farming is blind to the current trends in the global seafood trade. Our country exports more than 70 percent of its high-quality wild-caught and farmed seafood, while importing cheaper seafood from countries such as China and Thailand, which have spotty food safety records. Meanwhile, Japan and Europe have high seafood safety standards and receive nearly half of U.S. exports. Makes a lot of sense, huh?

Things You Need to Know

• Only 19 percent of the seafood available to U.S. consumers is from this country because the U.S. exports 71 percent of U.S.-produced seafood.
• If we did not export U.S.-caught and farmed seafood, 66 percent of the seafood available to U.S. consumers would be from the good old U.S. of A.
• About 17 percent of the seafood available to U.S. consumers is from China and about 12 percent is from Thailand.
• We export 20 percent of U.S.-caught seafood to Europe and 13 percent to Japan where seafood safety standards are high.
• We export 69 percent of U.S.-caught salmon. Only 20 percent of the salmon available to U.S. consumers is from the United States, while about 36 percent is farmed salmon from Chile, where food safety and labor standards are questionable.
• We export 12 percent of U.S.-caught seafood to China, the world’s center of seafood processing for re-export back to the United States.
• Nearly 15 percent of U.S. wild salmon is shipped to China, where it is processed and shipped back to the United States. We export about 45,000 metric tons of unprocessed wild salmon to China. We then import close to 52,000 metric tons of processed salmon back from China.
• We ship 12 percent of U.S. cod to China where it is processed and then sent back to the United States.
• The United States has lost about 13 percent of its seafood processing and canning jobs in the past decade.
• Hypothetically, assuming current seafood trade patterns and consumption remain constant, the United States would have to produce about 36 billion pounds of seafood through ocean farming in order to offset the 10.6 billion pounds of imports that are consumed domestically.

Curious? Find out more in our new report, Fish Story. To make your trip to the seafood counter a bit easier, carry our Smart Seafood Guide with you. Remember to ask about your seafood’s country of origin, too.

When you think of organic food, you probably think of healthy, sustainable, and environmentally friendly food, labeled with a whole lot of “free” adjectives –– pesticide-free, chemical-free, hormone-free…you get the idea. But do you think of fish as organic?

This week, the National Organics Standards Board (NOSB) –– a part of the United States Department of Agriculture –– will recommend allowing fish raised in aquaculture operations (otherwise known as fish farms) to be certified as organic and to carry the official USDA organic label. Specifically, the board will consider allowing the use of fishmeal from wild fish and open–net pens for fish raised in aquaculture facilities.

What does this mean for consumers? Well, it means that fish you eat from aquaculture facilities could be bad for your health and bad for the environment. Aquaculture feed is comprised of fishmeal and oil from wild fish, and commonly contains PCBs, dioxin, mercury, and other pollutants that are hazardous to human health. And, raising fish in open–net pens promotes pollution from fish waste, and can spread disease and parasites to wild fish populations.

Does this sound organic to you? Judging from this guy's reaction, we'd say not.

Currently, the U.S. government wants to expand aquaculture into the open ocean (3 to 200 miles from shore), and have even more fish raised in environmentally unsustainable conditions. However, while the federal government has spent millions of dollars funding offshore aquaculture research and demonstration projects on both U.S. coasts and in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the commercial viability of the fledgling industry has yet to be proven. Check out our new report Fishy Farms, The Problems with Open Ocean Aquaculture, which discusses this in more detail, and talks about how these commercial–scale fish farms will fail to meet basic organic criteria.

- Erin Greenfield
email • bio

Sigh. NOAA’s at it once again.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has the bright idea of promoting open ocean aquaculture as a way to reduce the country’s $9.2 billion seafood trade deficit and ease pressures on decimated wild marine fish populations. The government has spent more than $25 million supporting four experimental fish farms, as well as research into this technology, which involves growing tens of thousands of fish in cages anchored to the seafloor between three and 200 miles off the U.S. coast. The government wants to open public waters for the potential construction of thousands of these cages.

Sounds like a good plan in theory, but wait. Despite this substantial financial and political support, open ocean aquaculture has not been shown to be environmentally sustainable, financially viable, or technically possible on a commercial scale. In fact, each of the four taxpayer-supported experimental operations––in Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Puerto Rico––continues to be plagued by problems. For instance, cages and other equipment have broken, fish have died on a large scale, and sharks have threatened workers (surprise). At one aquaculture facility, each pound of fish sold costs about $3,000 in U.S. taxpayer money to produce. Ouch.

Matter of fact, the government’s own researchers say that open ocean fish farms could cause the same kind of problems linked to near-shore salmon farms, which dump chemical-laden waste directly into the ocean, produce fish that contain PCBs and other toxins, release genetically inferior fish that might mate with wild fish, and use massive amounts of fishmeal made from depleted wild fish stocks.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, “What can be done” ?

• For starters, get the facts about fish farming in our new report, Fishy Farms.
  
• You can help keep our ocean clean and safe by telling Congress to protect our oceans, coastal communities, and seafood safety.
  
• If you happen to be in the Gulf in December, feel free to attend one of our public hearings to let the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council know how you feel about commercial-scale fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico. While you're at it, kick back and listen to the Gulf Council's proposal in Issue 18 of SnackCast.
• And last but not least, make sustainable choices when choosing your favorite seafood dinner with our handy wallet-sized smart seafood guide.

Just in time for Halloween, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council––advisory body that helps create fishing regulations in the region––is hoping to approve a scary ocean fish farming plan soon. The plan would allow destructive commercial-scale fish farming in Gulf of Mexico, and would threaten the environment, human health, and communities throughout the Gulf.

This past weekend a large fish––not actually a fish, but a Mardi Gras-inspired costume––visited the Voodoo Music Experience in City Park, New Orleans (as you can see in these photos), letting festival goers know about negative impacts associated with open ocean aquaculture, which involves dividing up and giving away our oceans to private, often foreign-based, companies that grow fish in large net pens and cages three to 200 miles of the coast.

Today, the fish is continuing on to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi along with fisher men and women, concerned citizens, elected officials, environmental advocates, students and scientists to express their concerns and urge the Gulf Council to seriously consider the risks involved with commercial-scale fish farming and to give the public more opportunity to comment on and participate in this process.

Food & Water Watch recently released a report entitled Offshore Aquaculture: Bad News for the Gulf that examines the possible negative economic consequences of ocean fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico. The report concludes that “based on experience elsewhere, the practice of offshore aquaculture, combined with the influx of farmed fish imports, could threaten the economic wellbeing of the Gulf’s active fishing industries.”

Let’s hope the Gulf’s plan ends up RIP soon….

Read the report, Offshore Aquaculture: Bad News for the Gulf, and listen to a podcast discussion about open ocean aquaculture and the Gulf.

Then take action and tell the Gulf Council to do the right thing and seek more input before diving into uncharted waters. More than 8000 people have already written to the Gulf Council asking them to look before they leap into this dangerous new industry. Join them by adding your name.

Welcome to Issue 18 of SnackCast.

Next week The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council will discuss their plan to streamline the permitting and regulation of open-ocean fish farming. Food & Water Watch, as well as other fishing and conservation groups, talk about how the Gulf Council's proposal could lead to environmental and economic disaster in the region.

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Three little news items from this week to inform and amuse:

1. That "offshore aquaculture in Gulf of Mexico 'may yield economic distress"'" won't surprise you if you've been following our work on the issue.

2. What might is that law enforcement has been enlisted to recapture escaped culinary (though not biological) relatives of farmed fish as we discovered in the same issue of FishUpdate.com where we found our news story above. Saucy crayfish.

3. A compromise on the before-mentioned controversy over allowing interstate shipment of state inspected meat has been announced and would be a victory for producers and consumers alike.  Read the coalition press statement and letter here.

do you think Wal-Mart? 

Yeah, we don't either.

Earlier this month, the Big Box Collaborative announced the release of “Wal-Mart Sustainability Initiative: A Civil Society Critique” written by 23 organizations and analyzing Wal-Mart's smoke in mirrors sustainability initiatives. This report calls on Wal-Mart to reframe their sustainability efforts so that workers, the environment and communities are all respected.  Here are a couple excerpts from the sections Food & Water Watch contributed:

Food Safety

Ultimately, food retailers like Wal-Mart need to pay producers a fair price for their products so our food supply is not coming entirely from the lowest cost producers in places with lax safety standards and no labor protections.

Sustainable Seafood

In 2006, Wal-Mart announced that is was dedicated to selling only sustainable seafood in North American stores within three to five years. . . . The company’s foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, is funding Conservation International, which is collaborating with Wal-Mart and the [Marine Stewardship Council] to develop standards for sustainably sourced seafood. The reality is that it is impossible within the  big-box model that Wal-Mart operates.

Read more about Wal-Mart and organics, illegal logging, toxic toys, and other critical issues or find out about the Big Box Collaborative international day of action here.

The Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Media and Democracy have set up a new website that will help citizens track issues before their elected representatives in Congress. They're calling it Congresspedia.

You can find your member of Congress and read up on pending legislation.  We're partial to the page about open ocean aquaculture.

Happy surfing.

It’s in hog feed; it’s in poultry feed; it’s in fish feed. It’s melamine, known as plastic to the rest of us, yum!

Kona Blue, the industrial fish farming operation that Food & Water Watch criticized in our Seas of Doubt report and here on the blog, has announced that its fish were fed melamine laced feed and has suspended sales.

The whole melamine experience just highlights the woefully inadequate job the federal government is doing at protecting American consumers in the face of rising imports. Yesterday, Food & Water Watch released a little analysis of import refusals for veterinary drug residues in seafood (again, yum!). It turns out that without increasing inspections, contaminated shipments are up dramatically in the first four months of 2007. Read the whole analysis here.

We were pleased to see that Washington Post environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin graced the pages of the Food section today in an excellent article about the challenge of managing the ocean fisheries in a sustainable manner as seafood demand continues to rise. The article discussed the trap of shifting from consumption of one fish to another as more and more favorite fish populations become depleted.

Given that the Bush Administration, many members of Congress, and some of the media seem to have bought into the myth (hook, line, and sinker) that fish farming will save us, it was refreshing to read an article that acknowledged the problems with popular fish farm methods. 

Many chefs serve farm-raised fish on the grounds that farming operations do not deplete wild fish stocks. . . .  but scientists and environmental activists say the open-water fish farms that produce them can pollute the ocean while consuming vast amounts of smaller, wild fish as feed for the salmon.

While the Post article was a bit short on solutions, it did highlight some of the great work of chefs who are leading the way toward sustainable seafood consumption.

Cram tens of thousands of animals into industrial size cages offshore, toss in their feed (ground up wild fish), and let all the waste (and the occasional escaped fish) wash out to sea or pollute the sea floor and you’ve got open ocean aquaculture.  Tell Congress No.

Read more.

Most shrimp consumed in the United States is imported from East Asia and Latin America, where it was raised in industrial shrimp farms. If you are reading this, you are probably at least familiar with some of the environmental and social devastation caused by these operations.

We were sadly reminded of this devastation recently when security guards at Acqua Clara shrimp farm in Brazil murdered Francisco Cordeiro da Rocha. It is quite clear that industrial shrimp farming has yet to evolve from the violence that has taken so many innocent lives over the years.

On April 9th, Francisco and his friend Vilson Oliveira do Carmo had gone out to hunt waterfowl nearby the shrimp farm, a traditional activity in the region. When Francisco entered the shrimp farm to take a detour around an area too muddy to walk through, security guards shot him immediately. Then guards shot at Vilson, but thankfully he was able to escape.

Community members present during an interview a few days later told about the horrors they have experienced at the hands of Acqua Clara. These include difficulty in obtaining information on the case, the violence towards the farm’s employees, the environmental destruction caused by the farm, and the poor working conditions.

This tragedy reminds us of the true costs of consuming cheap, imported shrimp. Its production comes at the expense of the environment and communities, and on a sad day this April, it cost Francisco Cordeiro da Rocha his life.

The National Organics Standards Board accepted the recommendations of a panel for the proper use of the USDA’s organic label for seafood on Thursday. However, the board delayed its decision on whether or not to allow fish farmed in open-net cages and fish fed wild-caught feed use the labels.

Ladies and Gentlemen, simply put, this means we are all going to die.

Neil Anthony Sims, President of the open ocean fish farm Kona Blue, had the following to say about his disappointment in the NOSB’s decision to defer such recommendations:

“Establishing Organic seafood standards for marine fish – fish raised in net pens, and fed with fish meal and fish oil – could result in a sustainable increase in American consumption of seafood. And that will save lives, just as surely, as, say, a reduction in cigarette smoking will save lives.”

Whhhhaaaaaaaattttttt?????????

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! On behalf of Food & Water Watch, Thank you Mr. Sims for the great laugh.

The wonderful world of text messaging just got a little bigger with the launching of a new service by Friend of the Sea. Consumers can now receive detailed information about a particular seafood’s environmental status by sending a text message with the species name and Friend of the Sea will immediately respond with a comprehensive description of the most recent stock assessment and fishing method impact and selectivity.

If the fishery is sustainable, the system will say it’s a good choice. If the fishery is unsustainable, the stock is depleted or on the IUCN Red List of endangered species, the consumer is informed about the conservation concerns regarding the fishery.

Although the concept itself is great, Friend of the Sea may not be the certification program that appropriately determines whether a fishery is sustainable or not. We are particularly concerned about any group that certifies farmed fish that are raised offshore. Yikes! The escapement of these confined fish alone is responsible for massive damage to wild fish stocks around the globe.

Still, this text service looks slightly better than the ones advertised on late night TV commercials that offer to send you a hilarious joke for 99 cents (“you will be the funniest person in the room!”) or the pricier ones that promise to send a sexy message (Oooo baby.)

I came across some disturbing news today that reinforces all of the million reasons we already have to denounce irresponsible agriculture that uses pesticides and herbicides. Before this kind of food poisons our bodies, growing it poisons our land. And when it rains, that poison lands itself in our oceans and waterways.

The brown, green and aqua colors are the runoff against the blue, which is the reef itself. Image credit: CSIRO/GeoScience Australia

The latest victim is the Great Barrier Reef, which is acknowledged as one of the world’s most important natural assets. It’s the largest natural feature on earth stretching more than 2,300km along the northeast coast of Australia from the northern tip of Queensland to just north of Bundaberg.

Sadly, a recent series of satellite photos obtained by CSIRO scientists show over 135 kilometers of pesticides, herbicides and other micropollutant-ridden plumes extending offshore.

Recent studies have shown that even miniscule amounts of agricultural chemicals are so poisonous to coral that it can prevent spawning, therefore hindering the reef’s ability to regenerate and protect itself.

CSIRO scientist Arnold Dekker calls this “a good example of nature being a bit more complex than we think” and states that “it’s a no-brainer to say that if farmers are helped to farm as smart as possible, using as little fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides as possible, and only using what vegetation will take up, then you will have much less run-off of this material.”

A no-brainer indeed.