Roger O'Brien, president and CEO of US seafood company Santa Monica Seafood, disagreed with IntraFish Editor-in-Chief Drew Cherry's recent column, in which Cherry told the industry to stop blaming plant-based seafood for its problems:
I think you missed one of our major points of concern. If we as an industry do NOT stand up and insist these products change their labeling nomenclature, our silence will imply our concurrence that these products are seafood.
A recent National Fisheries Institute survey of 1,000 primary grocery shoppers indicated that almost 40% of these shoppers mistook plant-based seafood products for real seafood
When, in fact, the far majority of these plant-based products contain NO FISH. These products are fakes; they’re trying to imitate seafood in name, appearance and taste. And they’re trying to entice our seafood loving customers into buying these non-seafood based products in lieu of real seafood.
A recent National Fisheries Institute survey of 1,000 primary grocery shoppers indicated that almost 40 percent of these shoppers mistook plant-based seafood products for real seafood.
You don’t consider that a threat to our industry?!
I applaud Diversified Communication’s decision to not allow plant-based seafood producers to exhibit at the Boston Seafood Show this year. To do otherwise would have, again, validated these non-seafood products as real seafood.
Should we allow Goldfish crackers and Oyster Crackers to have a booth at the Boston Show too? Are they seafood?
Read more about the plant-based seafood debate here
New IntraFish Business Intelligence report is out now: Plant-based seafood: The Threats and Opportunities. Get your FREE sample report today. Report delves into plant-based and cell-grown seafood alternatives, sectors which saw recent rapid growth as a protein source and as an ingredient for making protein-rich foods that mimic shrimp, fish and other seafood products. Reach out to us at Intelligence@IntraFish.com for more information.
