Author questions sport group’s use of food security study
BY CRISTY FRY, MORRIS NEWS SERVICE-ALASKA
Original Article Source: Alaska Journal of Commerce
The Kenai River Sportfishing Association has used elements of a recently released study about food security on the Kenai Peninsula to assert that commercial fishing should be curtailed in favor of sport and personal-use fishing.
Not so fast, according to the one of the authors of the study, Philip Loring.
In a post on its website titled “Food security — how Alaska’s sport, personal use and subsistence fisheries put essential food on the table for Alaskan families,” KRSA states that the study “highlights the fundamental importance for the well-being and health of Alaskan households to have public access to locally harvested seafood through participation in, either by fishing or sharing, the state’s non-commercial fisheries.”
Using a variety of the statistics in the report about how people on the Kenai Peninsula get their seafood, KRSA goes on to say, “One conclusion of the report is that there needs to be a more robust system to provide residents with local access to seafood through a retooling of existing commercial fisheries to funnel more local harvests to the local peninsula retail markets. KRSA points out that the same outcome can occur, probably much more rapidly and thoroughly, through a strategic effort to strengthen and expand the existing non-commercial fisheries on the Kenai Peninsula for Alaskan residents.”
Due to copyright law, the Alaska Salmon Alliance cannot repost full articles. You can read the rest of this editorial here.
As with all the articles we link to on the ASA website, this report does not necessarily reflect the views of the Alaska Salmon Alliance.