In 2009, Maine lobster fishers were required to replace more than 27,000 miles of floating ground line (underwater ropes that float above the ocean floor and connect trawls) with whale-safe sinking line (which rests on or near the ocean floor, preventing whale entanglements). Then, in 2015, they were mandated to put more traps on each buoy to reduce the number of end lines, or individual points of harvest, in the water. By 2020, Maine lobsterers had to ensure their gear was labeled in case of a whale entanglement. The next year, regulators instituted a closure of a 1,000-square-mile area during a particularly lucrative time of year for lobsterers, and in 2022, regulations enforcing the use of weak links, which allow whales to more easily break free of entanglements, went into effect. Making these changes was costly and time-consuming for lobster harvesters.

Photography by Shutterstock.

But since right whales are so endangered—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that there are only about 360 North Atlantic right whales remaining, with only around 70 reproductively active females—advocates say it’s important to address threats to their continued existence now, before it’s too late. After all, large whales are important to their marine environments. “They are vital to the balance of marine ecosystems, play an important role in the food web and are key indicators of the overall health of the ocean,” says Jennifer Goebel, NOAA’s Marine Mammal Policy Analyst.

According to NOAA, regulating fishing equipment is key to protecting vulnerable right whales. “Vessel strike and entanglement are the leading threats to whales,” says Goebel. Until the required marking of lobster gear went into effect in 2020, it was difficult to attribute whale deaths and injuries to specific pieces of equipment. Since the regulation went into effect, other large whale species have been found entangled in Maine lobstering gear, demonstrating, says Goebel, that the equipment can, in fact, pose a threat to right whales as well.

Curt Brown, lobsterman and marine biologist for Ready Seafood, says that Maine’s lobstering industry has been proactive in complying with these new regulations. “We’re certainly not opposed to protecting right whales, quite to the contrary.” But many lobstermen and women question the necessity of these seemingly ever-more-restrictive right whale regulations, particularly because they maintain that there has been no documented entanglement of a right whale in Maine lobstering equipment since 2004, and there has never been a recorded right whale death associated with Maine’s lobstering industry. “Ultimately, we’re not in favor of being put out of business for rules and regulations that aren’t going to save any right whales,” explains Brown.

However, NOAA says that right whales do appear to be getting entangled in fishing rope off the coast of Maine, but the incidents can be difficult to document officially. “Most, over 85 percent, of all North Atlantic right whales show scars caused by entanglement, and about 100 new scars are detected each year, says Goebel. “Of the 1,600 entanglement scars and incidents evaluated by New England Aquarium researchers, only about 16 have been traced back to a fishing location—that is one percent. In most entanglement cases, no gear is observed. When gear is observed, it can rarely be retrieved.” Tracing these injuries back to the equipment that caused them is, therefore, quite complicated.

Lobster fishing in Vinalhaven, Maine, 2017. Photography by Shutterstock.

Ultimately, Maine lobsterers say that these regulations still pose significant risks to the financial viability of the industry. Maine’s lobster industry is composed of thousands of individuals, effectively all small business owners. Brown estimates that, conservatively, harvesters along the coast of Maine spent a collective $100 million adhering to regulations designed to protect right whales over the last 20 years, in addition to the hours of labor required to implement these changes. Although some state and federal subsidies are available for lobsterers, they say that the money doesn’t come close to covering the costs they’ve invested in making these changes.

In fact, some lobstermen, like Bruce Fernald, say that they very rarely even see whales out on the water. “We’re doing all this just because we’re supposed to, but there are no real issues with whales in our area,” says Fernald, who’s been fishing for more than 50 years. “We do it because we have to or you’ll lose your license.”

Some are feeling anxiety as the industry changes. “Within the last two years, there’s a lot of guys riding on the border of red,” says fourth-generation lobsterman Mike Sargent, who started fishing full-time in 2016. Rising costs of equipment and labor, plus supply chain shortages and a growing list of regulations, are making some lobsterers question their long-term prospects in the industry. A year ago, says Brown, “There were more boats for sale than I think I’ve ever seen, more traps for sale than I think I’ve ever seen.”

Sargent lives in Steuben, a town of 1,129 residents, and says that lobstering is really the only viable industry in town. “If fishing were to go south, this place would close up. There’s nothing here for me to do that I could support myself with the cost of living here. It just doesn’t exist.” 

Mike Sargent. Photography submitted.

Many of Maine’s lobsterers come from families that have done this work for generations, but it’s become more difficult for younger people to enter the industry. “Think, if you’re going to put your roots down here, you’re a young person wanting to start a family, the realization is it might not be here for you,” says Sargent. “There’s a good chance it won’t be here for your kids. So, do you want to put roots down here and not give your kid the same opportunities you had? You know, it’s a risk.”

The collapse of the lobster fishing industry could absolutely change the face of coastal Maine’s culture. Without a healthy, sustainable lobster fishery “many of these island communities would very quickly just turn into vacation homes for people from out of state, and that would be very different from what we have now,” says Brown.

Maine’s lobster fishers are hoping that things are starting to look up. In December of 2022, they won a six-year break from new regulations, which they hope will provide some stability for the industry and, in turn, for their communities. But regulators whose aim is to protect right whales still want to see changes in the industry, including wider use of ropeless fishing gear. Some environmentalists say that without the ability to enact new regulations, whales will die.

Brown underscored that the industry is well equipped to contend with the inevitable changes to come and that the six-year pause gives them some breathing room to adjust at a slower pace. But it’s still unclear how the industry will take shape after the conclusion of the six-year pause. What is clear, though, is that Maine’s lobsterers are committed to preserving their way of life. “The thought of losing this fishery to regulations that aren’t warranted is, in my mind, unacceptable,” says Brown. “People know Maine for its lobster resource. People don’t come to Maine to eat chicken.”

The post The Uncertain Future of Lobstering in Maine appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Humans are able to grow not just enough food but an excess of it—we produce 1.5 times the number of calories every person on earth needs to survive. But because of inefficiencies and inequities in our food system, much of that food goes to waste. From farm to table, we end up wasting about a third of our food.

As the issue of food waste became more public in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s in the midst of the Food Not Bombs movement, which recovered food waste as a protest against environmental destruction and war, some who bore witness to this inexcusable waste decided that they had to take action by incorporating this perfectly good food into their own diets. Documentaries such as  The Gleaners and I, Waste Not Want Not and Dive! depicted the lengths these people, dubbed “freegans,” would go to to ensure the forgotten food they found was put to good use. But considering the fact that dumpster diving is technically illegal in many cases, the movement was overwhelmingly white—after all, people of color face a much greater risk of harassment by law enforcement and arrest.

Not everyone who feeds themselves through dumpster diving is a freegan, though; Bénédicte Boisseron, professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who researches Black freeganism, draws a distinction between dumpstering as a practical versus political act. “The act of dumpster-diving and gleaning can be both political/ideological and practical, depending on the motivations,” writes Boisseron in an email. “Freeganism, on the other hand… connotes a sense of ideological and political commitment.” Although some people dumpster dive out of necessity, leading a freegan lifestyle is rooted in an anticapitalist ideological framework.

Photography from Shutterstock.

According to Alex Barnard, author of Freegans: Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America, the majority of freegans are white. “Freeganism grew out of a kind of anarchist subculture growing up around the anti-globalization movement in the ‘90s and ‘00s that itself was fairly white, and so freeganism demographics reflected that,” writes Barnard in an email. But it’s also true that freeganism is, in many ways, less accessible to people of color. “When I’m dumpster-diving, I seem to have a few more issues to deal with, as a Black male, than my white comrades,” said one Black freegan on an online forum. “They aren’t nearly as afraid of the police (or security), or threats of calling the police (or security), nor do they get harassed by law enforcement while diving to the degree that I do.”

Physical safety aside, people of color are also liable to feel the effects of food shaming more acutely than their white counterparts, says Boisseron. “When it comes to freeganism, the preconception that Blacks would dumpster dive out of necessity when Whites would do it out of concerns for the environment is the risk that many POCs will have to take if they venture into the freegan world.”

Other marginalized groups can experience challenges while dumpstering in different ways. Theresa Kadish, an educator and content creator who makes videos about dumpstering, says that, on average, she’s treated more kindly when she’s caught dumpster diving now than she was before her transition. Still, though, she recognizes that, in some contexts, dumpster diving as a trans woman could put her at increased risk of harassment, despite her personal lack of fear while dumpstering. “Yes, I am at greater risk now, and intellectually, I’m aware of that.” Considering that trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to face violent crime, an activity like dumpster diving, which is often undertaken alone and at night, could pose an increased risk of the threat of violence. Here, too, shaming can play a role in how one’s dumpster-diving habits are received. “Lots of people say [dumpstering is] gross and disgusting, and it can kind of be in the same breath as transphobic comments.”

Ironically, poor people, who stand to gain the most by dumpstering, often have more barriers to doing so than the middle-class divers who dominate the scene. A 2014 study of urban dumpster divers in Montréal, Quebec found that time was a limiting factor for many divers. Middle-class divers with college degrees who don’t have to work full time and who don’t have children could more easily make time to dumpster dive than those with full-time and/or multiple jobs and families to support. As with other marginalized groups, poor divers in this study feared stigma more than the middle-class participants, which limited their ability to form social networks that could make dumpstering easier and more fruitful.

Is freeganism effective as a political ideology if it’s inaccessible to so many? “Freegans, while totally aware of the class/race barriers to participating in freegan practices, never really had a focused and effective strategy for overcoming them,” says Barnard via email. “There was always a contradiction (of which freegans were totally aware) that in an effort to reduce their participation in capitalism, freegans were living off the waste thrown off by capitalism,” he says. “This was always intended to be temporary—that people would create a new, alternative economy where people could provide for their needs entirely independently—but that hasn’t been successful so far.”

Photography by Shutterstock.

Perhaps dumpster diving and repurposing trashed food could contribute to a more equitable food system if it were approached in a more communal way. “If we’re thinking of a large impact on food waste and food equity, freeganism has to be rethought at a larger scale and in a collective manner,” says Boisseron. She points to the Parisian restaurant Le Freegan Pony as an example of a space in which freeganism operates on a larger scale. The restaurant uses food that can’t be sold on the market to create healthy, enjoyable meals it then serves to patrons, who can choose to make a donation of whatever amount feels right to them.

But it’s hard to deny that this kind of operation would be difficult to run on a larger scale. Food banks, for example, can’t accept wasted food. According to Diane Letson, vice president of Food Industry Partnerships for Feeding America, there are myriad reasons why food banks can’t accept food from dumpster dives. “[There’s the] dignity of the person that we’re serving, but also we’re very, very focused on food safety because we realize that some of the folks we’re serving may be struggling with compromised immune systems or may have specific dietary needs.” A lot of wasted food simply can’t re-enter the food system on a large scale in any meaningful way—only 19.5 percent of food wasted by retailers actually ends up being donated.

In the past few years, we’ve seen the advent of food waste prevention apps such as  Too Good to Go, which connects people to wasted food for a small fee. Local buy-nothing groups can also serve a similar function. And some dumpster divers, like Kadish, who lives in a shared community, have stopped viewing freeganism in such political terms and rather see dumpstering as a way to feed themselves and the people immediately surrounding them. “I view it much more as a practical thing,” she says.

Despite the outrage and indignation many of us feel when we look at a dumpster full of perfectly good food, freeganism has not yet succeeded in getting meals to the people who need them most—or even people who don’t fit the white, cisgender, able-bodied, middle-class mold—on a wide scale. If anything, freeganism is reliant on the same capitalistic systems it rejects. Then again, has any way of eating adequately addressed the systemic injustices that seem so inherent in capitalism? It seems not. Freeganism may not have the ability to move the needle of food waste or food insecurity on a large scale in any meaningful way, but for those who do have the privilege to dumpster dive, sharing a free meal with someone who doesn’t have that privilege could be a step in the right direction.

The post Who Can Afford Free Food? The Limits of Freeganism appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Experts agree that limiting meat consumption or avoiding it altogether is the best way for individuals to reduce agricultural emissions that largely come from the rearing of livestock. But it’s not the only solution. Eating meat could actually be a way to cut emissions—if we’re eating the right kinds of meat, of course.

Chicken offal. Photography by Shutterstock.

Offal, or organ meats, can be a solution for sustainability-minded meat lovers. One 2019 study showed that if everyone in Germany decided to incorporate offal into their diets in place of other types of meat once or twice a week, the country could reduce livestock emissions by up to 14%. That’s because, despite many Western countries’ love of meat, a lot of the animal protein produced is wasted. Due to a lack of demand for organ meats, much of it is trashed or sent to rendering, a process that converts unused animal tissue into usable ingredients for products such as paint, soap, candles and fertilizer. And because animal agriculture is so resource-intensive, we end up wasting an incredible amount of energy and resources every time a liver, kidney or stomach ends up in a bin instead of on our plates.

At Walden Local Meat Co., a whole-animal share program located in Boston, MA, employees try to educate consumers about the sustainability and health benefits of choosing offal over other types of meat. “We’re trying to raise more awareness of it,” says Kristen Kilfoyle Boffo, director of strategic partnerships at Walden. “It’s just not something [people are] used to as an option.” Despite the popularity of their butcher’s blend of beef liver, heart and kidney, some of the organ meats they process still end up at a rendering facility. Not only does Walden not make a profit off of this meat, it actually has to pay for the rendering itself. “It’s just the cost of doing business,” says Kilfoyle Boffo. The offal it does sell goes for considerably less than the most popular cuts of meat it offers. For example, at the time of writing, Walden’s beef brisket was on sale for $12.99 per pound versus beef liver for $3.49 per pound and beef kidney for $1.99 per pound.

Chef Chris Cosentino. Photography by Gammamine.

In much of the world, organ meats are regularly enjoyed, even prized. But, according to Chris Cosentino, chef and author of Offal Good: Cooking From the Heart, with Guts, the US’s sordid history with these cuts of meat has affected our perceptions of them. “In the US, offal fell out of favor after WWII,” he explains. “There had been scarcity during the war, and people had to rely on the cheaper cuts. People who survived on rationing stamps during the war were forced to eat offal, as it was more readily available as meat was rationed. After the war, offal was viewed as the food of the poor.” This association with poverty, with lack, has cast a shadow on offal’s popularity for decades, rendering these cheaper cuts largely undesirable to those who want to distinguish themselves from the poor. More expensive offal dishes do not seem to suffer the same fate; foie gras and pâté, for example, are often associated with luxury and fine dining in a way that liver and onions isn’t.

 Even beyond the historical context of offal consumption in the US, though, organ meats may be unappealing to some because they’re recognizable as body parts that humans also have. “In our minds, most people have a direct correlation to [themselves] when [they] see these meats: brains, liver, spleen. We all have these organs, so it becomes very unsettling for many people,” says Cosentino. Of course, we all know that the meat we buy is animal flesh, but the chopped-up skeletal meat many of us are used to looks less like body parts we readily recognize than hearts, kidneys or livers do. Perhaps we’re hesitant to think too deeply about the fact that our meal was once a living being not dissimilar to ourselves.

Additionally, many of us have become more and more disconnected from our food system. “Most of us just walk about supermarkets and pick stuff off of the shelves rather than being involved in the production of food, so when something as far removed as organ meats is suggested, it just isn’t even considered,” says Sam Feltham, director of the Public Health Collaboration, a UK-based non-profit that created Organuary, which encouraged people to enjoy more offal during the month of January to minimize food waste and improve their nutrition.

Photography by Shutterstock.

But it may be time to get rid of our hang-ups regarding offal. Not only can offal be a more sustainable choice, in many cases, offal meats are actually more nutritious than their skeletal meat counterparts. Liver in particular provides significant amounts of iron, a mineral in which many Americans are deficient.

Beyond the sustainability and health benefits of eating offal, these cuts of meat hold tremendous culinary potential as well. “Offal offers a broader flavor and texture experience,” says Cosentino. Many cultures discovered the joys of well-cooked offal long ago; dishes such as Korean seolleongtang, a beef soup that contains various organ meats, and Spanish oreja de cerdo, crispy pig ears served as tapas, highlight just how enjoyable offal can be when it’s treated with intention and care in the kitchen.

Goose noodle soup. Photography by Michael Harlan Turkell.

But there is hope yet for offal’s popularity in the US. As interest in global cuisines grows, Americans may have more access to, and awareness of, offal dishes from cultures other than their own, perhaps inspiring them to incorporate these meats into their diets in new, delicious ways. “We do hold the keys to introducing [offal] to people,” says Ron Abell, senior executive chef at Fenway Park, the infamous Boston baseball field. Abell often works offal meats into his buffets, exposing his guests to cuts with which they may not have been acquainted before. “[People] are amazed at it.”

Teaching consumers how to prepare offal in their own kitchens is important, too. Walden Local Meat Co. offers recipes for home cooks newer to using offal.  Even if organ meats don’t seem immediately appealing, home cooks can easily tap into those health and sustainability benefits by breaking the cuts down into more manageable consistencies. “A good place to start is to add blended liver or kidneys to dishes you already cook, such as bolognese or cottage pie—that’s how I sneak it into my children’s food,” says Feltham.

In the US, offal can be polarizing, but it doesn’t have to be. This country has embraced offal before, and it can again. Of course, choosing beef liver over a prime rib isn’t single-handedly going to undo the environmental harms caused by our wasteful food system, but creating demand for a more sustainable type of meat could be a single step in the right direction.

The post Offaly Delicious: Can the US Learn to Love Organ Meats Again? appeared first on Modern Farmer.