Greenpeace Taiwan yesterday held an impromptu protest outside a Mitsui Taipei Food & Beverage Enterprise Group restaurant in Taipei over what it called the company’s “reluctance to initiate talks” about serving bluefin tuna at its outlets.
Members of the group yesterday morning used a hoist to hang a banner reading “serving endangered species” from the sign on Mitsui’s flagship store in the Zhongshan District (中山).
Citing a ranking published by Greenpeace in January, Greenpeace Taiwan ocean campaigner Hsieh Yi-hsuan (謝易軒) said that the Japanese-style restaurant chain is one of the poorest-performing seafood chains in the nation in terms of its damage to marine ecology, ranking at the bottom along with Sushi Express, the nation’s largest conveyor-belt sushi bar chain.
Photo: Ian Kuo, Taipei Times
Hsieh criticized Mitsui’s procurement policies and the fishing methods of the fishermen it is affiliated with — as well as its data transparency, for example whether customers are informed of where the fish are harvested and in what ways they were caught.
Greenpeace Taiwan has tried to arrange a meeting with Mitsui officials in a bid to persuade the company to adopt more eco-friendly methods, but has only received perfunctory responses, Hsieh said.
A member from Mitsui’s management who attended the protest first denied that the group serves bluefin tuna at its stores, but later admitted that the fish is on offer when Greenpeace Taiwan members cited findings they made posing as customers.
Asked where the bluefin tuna is sourced and if the chain would consider stopping the sale of it, he said only that the bluefin tuna was caught in the Indian Ocean and that the chain would discuss how to improve fishing methods with “the people they work with.”
Of the nine seafood restaurant chains that Greenpeace Taiwan has been in talks with, only Shin-Yeh (欣葉) has promised to stop serving bluefin tuna and provide information transparency, Hsieh said.
The organization would continue its campaign to dissuade restaurants from serving vulnerable marine species, she said.
Greenpeace, the WWF and other environmental groups say bluefin tuna populations in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have dropped significantly in recent decades from overfishing and illegal fishing driven by the demand for tuna for sushi. Bluefin tuna are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
The US’ joint strikes with Israel on Iran dismantled a key pillar of China’s regional strategy, removing an important piece in Beijing’s potential Taiwan Strait scenario, said Zineb Riboua, a senior researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Peace and Security. In an article titled: “The Iran Question Is All About China,” Riboua said that understanding the Iran issue in the context of China’s “grand strategy” is essential to fully grasp the complexity of the situation. Beijing has spent billions of dollars over the years turning Iran into a “structural strategic asset,” diverting US military resources in the
RSS