Maybe Aquatic Life Institute or Fish Welfare Initiative would work on this. I’m not sure if they’re already aware. I think it would be closer to ALI’s work.
Thanks for suggestions Micheal. Haven from FWI is actually helping me to do research on this in his free time. He said that FWI would be open to putting someone who would work on this under their organization if given funding, but not to redirecting the time of the current staff towards the project. This makes sense because they want to continue with the work that they have started doing, and they are not experts on lobbying and I think few if any of them are located in the U.S. I haven’t talked about this with ALI yet (you are right, I should), but from what I hear, I think that they also don’t have expertise in U.S. lobbying, are mostly not located in the U.S., and would probably not want to redirect current staff time to new projects. I don’t know how much previous lobbying experience is important here but my sense is that it is. I feel that what is needed is a person (or two) who would be suitable for leading this, and then we could figure out all the organizational and funding stuff.
Hi Saulius, thank you for your comment! To add some more context, ALI is based in New York, but we indeed have a global team. I’m very glad you’re bringing up baitfish. Our focus for 2020 was the creation of the Aquatic Animal Alliance, the drafting of our coalition welfare standards and the launch of our certifier campaign. We’ve done great progress on all of them, and actually already had our first victory with GlobalGAP (which certifies more than 1% of the global aquaculture market). For next year, we plan on continuing our certifier campaign but also wanted to pursue 2 additional campaigns through the Alliance: lobbying and a fish restocking campaign. On the lobbying front, we’ve already been active in France and plan to do more work there and at the EU level. Regarding fish restocking, we plan on starting working with US states departments of Fish and Wildlife to get them to adopt some or all of our welfare standards. We have already contacted vets who work at these agencies; and through our producer sentiment roundtables we organized in the fall, we have already found fish restocking producers who also are open to working with us. I’m really glad you bringing up baitfish, because we were not planning to focus on it, but you make a compelling case, I would love to follow up on that. That being said, it’s also true that we are running a tight ship, so it will also depending on funding, the interest of the other Alliance members and the progress of our certifier campaign. If you have any questions about the Aquatic Life Institute, the Aquatic Animal Alliance, or any of the work we are currently doing please reach out to us at kiara@ali.fish. We hope to share more of our research pieces and accomplishments very shortly!
Thank you very much William for your comment! I will follow up with you in private but there are few things that I thought would be suitable to say/​ask here as well.
It was very recently brought to my attention that baitfish seems to also be farmed in France and that there is an animal advocacy organization that has a petition on it (see here and here). I don’t know what is the scale of baitfish farming in France or in any country other than the U.S., so I don’t yet know if it is an issue I would recommend tackling in France. I just thought I should mention that in case you or someone else could be interested in doing some lobbying on this issue there.
Also, at Rethink Priorities we try to track any possible impact we had on the projects of animal welfare organizations. So I wanted to ask, do you think you would have worked on fish restocking if this article was never written? And please don’t hesitate to say that you knew about the industry and its size independently of that article and it had nothing to do with it, if that is the case :)
Thanks Saulius, it actually so happens that the organization running the baitfish petition in France, Paris Animaux Zoopolis, was founded by Amandine Sanvisens… who is also the director of ALI in France! But, and that goes to your next point, we were not aware of the relative scale of baitfish farming; so if we do end up prioritizing it over another intervention, the credit for the additional impact of doing that campaign over the one we would have done otherwise would go to you and RP! Would love to chat more and we’ll keep you updated.
Good to know. I’ve talked to Gautier who wrote the French article I linked to, and he said he had already tried to figure out the scale of the industry in France, but didn’t manage to find stats on it. However, he said that there are indications that it is a small industry compared to the U.S. He said there was work on it mostly due to legal precedent reasons rather than direct impact.
Maybe Aquatic Life Institute or Fish Welfare Initiative would work on this. I’m not sure if they’re already aware. I think it would be closer to ALI’s work.
Thanks for suggestions Micheal. Haven from FWI is actually helping me to do research on this in his free time. He said that FWI would be open to putting someone who would work on this under their organization if given funding, but not to redirecting the time of the current staff towards the project. This makes sense because they want to continue with the work that they have started doing, and they are not experts on lobbying and I think few if any of them are located in the U.S. I haven’t talked about this with ALI yet (you are right, I should), but from what I hear, I think that they also don’t have expertise in U.S. lobbying, are mostly not located in the U.S., and would probably not want to redirect current staff time to new projects. I don’t know how much previous lobbying experience is important here but my sense is that it is. I feel that what is needed is a person (or two) who would be suitable for leading this, and then we could figure out all the organizational and funding stuff.
Hi Saulius, thank you for your comment! To add some more context, ALI is based in New York, but we indeed have a global team. I’m very glad you’re bringing up baitfish. Our focus for 2020 was the creation of the Aquatic Animal Alliance, the drafting of our coalition welfare standards and the launch of our certifier campaign. We’ve done great progress on all of them, and actually already had our first victory with GlobalGAP (which certifies more than 1% of the global aquaculture market). For next year, we plan on continuing our certifier campaign but also wanted to pursue 2 additional campaigns through the Alliance: lobbying and a fish restocking campaign. On the lobbying front, we’ve already been active in France and plan to do more work there and at the EU level. Regarding fish restocking, we plan on starting working with US states departments of Fish and Wildlife to get them to adopt some or all of our welfare standards. We have already contacted vets who work at these agencies; and through our producer sentiment roundtables we organized in the fall, we have already found fish restocking producers who also are open to working with us. I’m really glad you bringing up baitfish, because we were not planning to focus on it, but you make a compelling case, I would love to follow up on that. That being said, it’s also true that we are running a tight ship, so it will also depending on funding, the interest of the other Alliance members and the progress of our certifier campaign. If you have any questions about the Aquatic Life Institute, the Aquatic Animal Alliance, or any of the work we are currently doing please reach out to us at kiara@ali.fish. We hope to share more of our research pieces and accomplishments very shortly!
Thank you very much William for your comment! I will follow up with you in private but there are few things that I thought would be suitable to say/​ask here as well.
It was very recently brought to my attention that baitfish seems to also be farmed in France and that there is an animal advocacy organization that has a petition on it (see here and here). I don’t know what is the scale of baitfish farming in France or in any country other than the U.S., so I don’t yet know if it is an issue I would recommend tackling in France. I just thought I should mention that in case you or someone else could be interested in doing some lobbying on this issue there.
Also, at Rethink Priorities we try to track any possible impact we had on the projects of animal welfare organizations. So I wanted to ask, do you think you would have worked on fish restocking if this article was never written? And please don’t hesitate to say that you knew about the industry and its size independently of that article and it had nothing to do with it, if that is the case :)
Thanks Saulius, it actually so happens that the organization running the baitfish petition in France, Paris Animaux Zoopolis, was founded by Amandine Sanvisens… who is also the director of ALI in France! But, and that goes to your next point, we were not aware of the relative scale of baitfish farming; so if we do end up prioritizing it over another intervention, the credit for the additional impact of doing that campaign over the one we would have done otherwise would go to you and RP! Would love to chat more and we’ll keep you updated.
Good to know. I’ve talked to Gautier who wrote the French article I linked to, and he said he had already tried to figure out the scale of the industry in France, but didn’t manage to find stats on it. However, he said that there are indications that it is a small industry compared to the U.S. He said there was work on it mostly due to legal precedent reasons rather than direct impact.