A two non-linear dynamic models, first one in two state variables and one control and the second one with three state variables and one control, are presented for the purpose of finding the optimal combination of exploitation, capital investment and price variation in the commercial fishing industry. This optimal combination is determined in terms of management policies. Exploitation, capital and price variation are controlled through the utilization rate of available capital. A novel feature in this model is that (...) the variation of the capital depends on the income. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of a current environmental issue dividing two industries in the UK. The issue is offshore wind farms, and the industries are commercial fishing and wind energy. The controversy over offshore wind farms highlights three core issues of conflict: the adequacy of stakeholder consultation processes; the right to compensation for loss of livelihood; and the lack of adequate data. We find that the characterisations that developers, regulators, and fishers hold of each other critically inform (...) their positions on these issues. We examine the weak bargaining position of fishers, and the 'power game' that is played out between them and developers. We conclude that offshore wind farm development would be better managed if stakeholder consultation was more extensive, compensation claims were standardised, and scientific data were more readily available, but that in the meantime, fishers could improve their bargaining power by mobilising potential allies. (shrink)

We used a paper-based survey to explore dynamics of Local Food Networks for fish in the Icelandic Westfjords. Preference for local fish remains high, and fish consumption is largely embedded within a gift network, rather than typical commercial channels off ering costly, frozen, and non-local products. Individuals lacking personal connections to the fishing industry obtain fish from these commercial networks. LFNs for fish in rural Icelandic communities are therefore expressions of power dimensions that are symptomatic of the (...) larger inequalities built into the fisheries management system, designed for globalized food networks. The disconnect between large-scale production mechanisms and local consumption patterns highlights the lack of responsiveness of the fishing industry to local Icelandic consumers and demonstrates the impacts national political structures can have on LFNs. (shrink)

Abstract.This paper uses an evolutionary perspective to identify variables influencing compliance with moral codes about honest communication. Data on over one thousand radio conversations among lobster fishers in two harbors in Maine are compared in regard to the sharing of information. The sharing of accurate information is found to be significantly more frequent in the harbor that is more integrated by reciprocally altruistic relationships. This is consistent with the view that moral systems are systems of indirect reciprocity, but it also (...) suggests that humans have evolved to base their compliance with moral codes on cues from their social environment. (shrink)

: An open-ended questionnaire elicited concepts of virtue and duty, and ethical language and priorities from commercial fishers and residents of ports in the Republic of Ireland. Respondents came from viable and stressed fisheries and from nontraditional and traditional natural resources communities (including one in Gaeltacht). In reporting the characteristics of a "good" fisher, viable fisheries emphasized virtues such as work ethic, respect for the crew, and respect for the sea. The responses from stressed fisheries materialized virtue, and decreased (...) emphasis on interpersonal relationships while increasing emphasis on owning a large vessel, investing, and being greedy. Most noble actions primarily concerned rescues and sharing equipment and time in difficult circumstances. Worst actions concerned physical damage to gear, persons, or to the marine environment. Respondents personified the sea, and used similar vocabulary to express care for people and for marine organisms. Although respondents from all communities thought over-fishing and illegal fishing were threats to the fishery, respondents from viable fisheries were more likely to believe they could take personal conservation action to protect the fishery, while those from stressed fisheries despaired of personal protective action and believed that nothing could be done, or that excluding the foreign fleets was necessary for Irish fisheries to recover. European Community policies often conflict with the norms of traditional, artisanal fishers. (shrink)

Improvements in production methods over the last two decades have resulted in aquaculture becoming a significant contributor to food production in many countries. Increased efficiency and production levels are off-setting unsustainable capture fishing practices and contributing to food security, particularly in a number of developing countries. The challenge for the rapidly growing aquaculture industry is to develop and apply technologies that ensure sustainable production methods that will reduce environmental damage, increase productivity across the sector, and respect the diverse social (...) and cultural dimensions of fish farming that are observed globally. The aquaculture industry currently faces a number of technology trajectories, which include the option to commercially produce genetically modified (GM) fish. The use of genetic modification in aquaculture has the potential to contribute to increased food security and is claimed to be the next logical step for the industry. However, the potential use of these technologies raises a number of important ethical questions. Using an ethical framework, the Ethical Matrix, this paper explores a number of the ethical issues potentially raised by the use of GM technologies in aquaculture. Several key issues have been identified. These include aspects of distributive justice for producers; use of a precautionary approach in the management of environmental risk and food safety; and impacts on the welfare and intrinsic value of the fish. There is a need to conduct a comparative analysis of the full economic cycle of the use of GM fish in aquaculture production for developing countries. There is also a need to initiate an informed dialogue between stakeholders and strenuous efforts should be made to ensure the participation of producers and their representatives from developing nations. An additional concern is that any national licensing of the first generation of GM fish, i.e., in the USA, may initiate and frame an assessment cycle, mediated by the WTO, which could dominate the conditions under which the technology will be applied and regulated globally. Therefore, an integrated analysis of the technology development trajectories, in terms of international policy, IPR, and operational implications, as well as an analysis of a broader range of ethical concerns, is needed. (shrink)

Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her books include: The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), The Time Bind (1997) and The Commercialization of Intimate Life (2003). In her work, Hochschild explores the many ways we manage our emotions in personal life and perform emotional labor in the workplace. Her most recent work explores the growing political divide in America, and the need for each side to climb an ‘empathy wall’ to (...) begin dialogue with those on the other side. She reports on five years of field-work among Tea Party enthusiasts in Louisiana in her latest book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016). In this interview, she reflects on the phenomenon of critique within the framework of emotional labor, which leads to discussions on neoliberalism and the ideal worker in contemporary working life. (shrink)

"Younker delves into and illustrates every aspect of Putman's life: how he works, what he does to relax, how he interacts with family and friends. He shows how Putman fished, divulging some of the secrets of the professional fisherman. Examining this fisherman's life - as well as the lives of his relatives and friends - Younker demonstrates Putman's skill as colorful storyteller with a rich vocabulary. Putman proved forthright when expressing his views about life, river lore, and the changing ecology."--Jacket.

Abstract“The singular state of the ice”. The Cartographic Knowledge of the Whaler William Scoresby. The English whaler William Scoresby, Jr. (1790–1857) made use of his annual voyages to the Greenland Sea for distinguished scientific work, detailed records and the production of amazing maps. Due to his intensive contacts to scientists as Robert Jameson and politicians as Joseph Banks and John Barrow his research achieved a great deal of attention and set a benchmark for at least half a century. Scoresby combined (...) the adventurous world of Arctic fishery with academic sciences. He attained the northernmost point anybody reached in his time, he extended the cartographic knowledge and forced the conquest and utilisation of the oceans for commercial fishing. But his biography enquires also about who got an opportunity for research and for what. Especially it demonstrates the strong impact practical knowledge of a whaler could have on geographic research and Arctic cartography. (shrink)

This article focuses on the trajectory of life of the three generations of the Jankowski family in Siberia, Primorski Krai and Korea in the years 1863– 1945 in terms of their economic, cultural and scientific achievements. The founder of the Far Eastern branch of the family was Michał Jankowski. Exiled to Siberia for participation in the January Uprising of 1863, as a man of indefatigable energy and collaborator of Benedykt Dybowski, he undertook many initiatives, including hunting, wild ginseng collecting and (...) a gold mining administration. In 1880 he settled on the Sidiemi Peninsula near Vladivostok, where he established a farm specializing in horse breeding and ginseng gardening. In addition to farming, he conducted natural history and archaeological research and sent the acquired specimens and artifacts to Russian and European museums. The tradition of his father was continued in the second generation by Jerzy Mikhailovich Jankowski. Endowed with similar character and talent, he studied agriculture and husbandry in Texas and at the agricultural faculty of St. Louis University in Missouri. He expanded the farm to include commercial fishing and rice cultivation. The occupation of the Far East by the Red Army in 1922 forced the family to emigrate to Korea and Manchuria. The new family seat called Novina was built on the Ompo River near the town of Ch’ŏngjin, about 200 kilometers south along the Korean coastline from the mouth of the Tuman River. It was not only a modern farm with specialized animal husbandry and fruit farming, but was also a recreational, cultural, and spiritual enclave, with a school for children, a summer theater, an Orthodox church, and a resort for holidaymakers. The third and the most famous representative of the family was Walery Jurewicz Jankowski. In 1945, he joined the Soviet Army, where, due to his knowledge of Korean and Japanese, he served as an interpreter for the military intelligence at the headquarters of the 25th Army in P’yŏngyang. At the beginning of 1946, both Walery and his fathers were arrested and sent to the labor camps. The family was scattered around the world, from Australia to the North and Latin Americas and the farm was nationalized. The Jankowsky family achieved spectacular success in the Russian Far East and in Korea because they were able to apply the traditional Polish gentry ethos based on the extended structure of family and servants, which they were able to combine with a chivalrous fortitude and openness to hard life in the frontiers populated by various ethnic groups. (shrink)

The ethical issues raised by aquaculture were analyzed. A modification of the Ethical Matrix of the Food Ethics Council for the evaluation of novel foods was used; the Ethical Matrix was changed in order to include the various aquaculture production stages separately. The following stages were distinguished: the breeding stage, the growth/feeding stage, the “other-handling” stage (that includes disease and treatment, transportation of organisms, killing procedure, and DNA vaccinations), and the commercialization stage. The ethical issues concerning the producers, the consumers, (...) the environment, and the aquacultured organisms, are discussed. This scheme was fitted to the intensive cage-culture of carnivorous fish. The differences with other forms of aquaculture are discussed, and how the scheme extrapolates to them. The ethical evaluation of aquaculture, in practice, will be rather a utilitarian balancing of cost and benefits of the respective actions. The desired characteristics of an ethical evaluation have been also outlined. Ethical evaluation should not be limited to a purely scientific analysis; it should be holistic, comparable to available alternatives, and should have the flexibility to incorporate new data generated in the fast growing/continuous changing aquaculture sector. (shrink)

Displays of dead nonhuman animals are a common sight on the walls of many American homes and commercial establishments. Taxidermists are the individuals who preserve and attempt to re-create dead animals, birds, and fish so they can be displayed. Little is known about those employed in the profession, including characteristics of individuals who enter this line of work. Using a qualitative approach to data collection, this exploratory research examined motivations for becoming a taxidermist in Montana. Findings suggest that Montana (...) taxidermists entered the profession for one of five main reasons: an interest in wildlife, a desire to mount their own trophies, a hobby that became a job, the necessity of changing jobs, and miscellaneous motivations. (shrink)

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book offers a devastating look at deeply flawed development processes driven by international finance, African governments and the global consulting industry. It examines major river basin development underway in the semi-arid borderlands of Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan and its disastrous human rights consequences for a half-million indigenous people. The volume traces the historical origins of Gibe III megadam construction along the Omo River in Ethiopia-in turn, enabling irrigation (...) for commercial-scale agricultural development and causing radical reduction of downstream Omo and (Kenya's) Lake Turkana waters. Presenting case studies of indigenous Dasanech and northernmost Turkana livelihood systems and Gibe III linked impacts on them, the author predicts agropastoral and fishing economic collapse, region-wide hunger with exposure to disease epidemics, irreversible natural resource destruction and cross-border interethnic armed conflict spilling into South Sudan. The book identifies fundamental failings of government and development bank impact assessments, including their distortion or omission of mandated transboundary assessment, cumulative effects of the Gibe III dam and its linked Ethiopia-Kenya energy transmission 'highway' project, key hydrologic and human ecological characteristics, major earthquake threat in the dam region and widespread expropriation and political repression. Violations of internationally recognized human rights, especially by the Ethiopian government but also the Kenyan government, are extensive and on the increase-with collaboration by the development banks, in breach of their own internal operational procedures. A policy crossroads has now emerged. The author presents the alternative to the present looming catastrophe-consideration of development suspension in order to undertake genuinely independent transboundary assessment and a plan for continued development action within a human rights framework-forging a sustainable future for the indigenous peoples now directly threatened and for their respective eastern Africa states. Claudia Carr's book is a treasure of detailed information gathered over many years concerning river basin development of the Omo River in Ethiopia and its impact on the peoples of the lower Omo Basin and the Lake Turkana region in Kenya. It contains numerous maps, charts, and photographs not previously available to the public. The book is highly critical of the environmental and human rights implications of the Omo River hydropower projects on both the local ethnic communities in Ethiopia and on the downstream Turkana in Kenya. David Shinn Former Ambassador to Ethiopia and to Burkina Faso Adjust Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington D.C. (shrink)

Predation and escaping from predation through hiding are two fundamental phenomena in ecology. The most common approach to reducing the chance of predation is to use a refuge. Here, we consider a three species fishery model system with prey refuge induced by a Holling type-II functional response. These three species of fish populations are named prey, middle predator, and top predator. Harvesting is employed in most fishery models to achieve both ecological and commercial benefits. Research proves that non-linear harvesting (...) (Michaelis–Menten type) returns more realistic outcomes. So, we have combined the Michaelis–Menten type of harvesting efforts for all populations. Uniform boundedness conditions for the solutions of the model are discussed. The existence conditions for possible equilibrium points with stability are presented. We explain the dynamical behavior at each equilibrium point through bifurcation analysis. The persistent criteria of the system are examined. Bionomic equilibrium and optimal harvesting control using Pontryagin’s maximum principle are calculated. For validation of the model in the real world, we have implemented this in the freshwater ecosystem of Lake Victoria. Extraction of native fish species and ecological balances are the foremost solicitude of Lake Victoria. We may resolve this concern partially by implementing prey refuge, since it may sustain the ecology of Lake Victoria, and therefore also its economical importance. Lake Victoria is acclaimed worldwide for the trade of fishing. Also, it provides the largest employment in east-central Africa and is beneficial to fishing equipment manufacturers. So, the bionomic equilibrium and harvesting control have significant applications in the fisheries. All the analytical studies are verified by numerical simulations. We have plotted phase portraits, bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponents to explore the dynamics of the proposed model. (shrink)

The accumulation of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) has raised public awareness due to harmful contamination to both human and marine creatures. This study was designed to determine the concentration of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni) in the intestine, kidney, muscle, gill, and liver tissues of local commercial edible fish, fourfinger threadfin (Eleutheronema tetradactylum), and black pomfret (Parastromateus niger) collected from Morib (M) and Kuala Selangor (KS). Among the studied PTEs, Cu and Zn were essential elements (...) to regulate body metabolism with certain dosages required while Cd and Ni were considered as non-essential elements that posed chronic and carcinogenic risk. The concentration of PTEs in fish tissue samples was analyzed using flame atomic absorption spectrometry (F-AAS). By comparing the concentration of PTEs in fish tissues as a bioindicator, the environmental risk of Morib was more serious than Kuala Selangor because both fish species collected from Morib resulted in a higher PTEs concentration. For an average 62 kg adult with a fish ingestion rate (FIR) of 0.16 kg/person/day in Malaysia, the estimated weekly intake (EWI) of Cd from the consumption of E. tetradactylum (M: 0.0135 mg/kg; KS: 0.0134 mg/kg) and P. niger (M: 0.0140 mg/kg; KS: 0.0132 mg/kg) had exceeded the provisional tolerable weekly intake (Cd: 0.007 mg/kg) established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and oral reference dose (ORD) values of Cd (0.001 mg/kg/day) as provided by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) regional screening level, thus it posed chronic risks for daily basis consumption. Besides, the value of the carcinogenic risk of Cd (0.7−3 to 0.8−3) and Ni (0.5−3 to 0.6−3) were in between the acceptable range (10−6 to 10−4) of the health index that indicates a relatively low possibility cancer occurrence to the consumers in both Morib and Kuala Selangor. This study recommended FIR to be 0.80 kg/person/day to reduce the possibility of posing chronic and carcinogenic risks while at the same time obtaining the essential nutrients from the fish. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FDA Releases Draft Guidance on Regulation of Genetically Engineered AnimalsJohn P. Gluck (bio) and Mark T. Holdsworth (bio)On 18 September 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft set of guidelines for those involved in developing genetically engineered animals with heritable recombinant DNA (rDNA) constructs and is requesting comment from industry and the public about their content. The document does not impose new regulations but details (...) how existing laws and regulations apply to genetically engineered (GE) animals and offers advice to developers on how to negotiate the laws in the most efficient and productive manner. The draft guidance document is not legally enforceable at this juncture, but the guidelines are recommendations reflecting the FDA's "current thinking on a topic."The modification of GE animals being developed for commercialization, which are the focus of the document, fall into six categories: modifications intended to (1) enhance food quality—e.g., faster growing fish and meats with better nutritional profiles; (2) improve animal health via increased resistance to disease—e.g., mastitis in dairy cattle and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE); (3) create so-called "biopharm" animals capable of producing therapeutic products such as insulin, clotting factors, and tissues for human transplantation; (4) reduce the barriers to human animal interaction—e.g., hypoallergenic pets; (5) develop valid animal models of human disease—e.g., Parkinson's disease, Lesh-Nyhan's syndrome, and cancer; and (6) improve production of industrial or consumer products such as fiber. The timing of the guidelines coincides with the FDA's belief in an expected boon in the number of GE animals approaching the stage of commercialization.The FDA's involvement in the approval process emerges from the new animal drug provisions of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act and the definition of what constitutes a drug. The Act defines a new animal drug as "an article (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of... animals." A rDNA construct intended to affect the structure or function of an animal meets the definition of a new animal drug, regardless of whether the resulting GE animals are intended for human food or the production of pharmaceuticals or any other substances. [End Page 393]Before proceeding to a review of the draft guidelines, it is important briefly to set the controversies around GE animals in historical and ethical context.The Ethical DebateFrom its inception, the intentional genetic modification or genetic engineering of molecules, plants, and animals by the techniques of gene splicing has consistently elicited strong responses from both the scientific community and the public. There are some data to suggest that although the concerns of scientists fall primarily into the category of possible biohazards, those of the public also reflect great concern about the intrinsic moral issues, such as whether there is something fundamentally wrong with this line of work, making it a form of forbidden knowledge (see, e.g., Gaskell 1997). When news of Paul Berg's attempts in 1970 to graft the primate tumor virus (SV 40) onto the intestinal tract bacteria Escherichia coli for the purpose of studying how normal cells may be transformed into cancerous cells was shared with colleagues, he was strongly encouraged to reflect on the potential public health risks if somehow the altered bacteria broke containment and entered the environment. Thanks to Berg's leadership, these concerns soon resulted in conferences held in Asilomar, California, and New Hampton, New Hampshire, where the ethical responsibilities of microbiologists involved in this research were discussed. These initial discussions resulted in what has come to be known as "The Moratorium Letter" (Shattuck 1996) published in the journal Science in 1974. This letter, signed by 11 leaders in the field, actually recommended restrictions on several types of experiments that were considered to be particularly risky and stated "that adherence to our major recommendations will entail postponement or possibly abandonment of certain types of scientifically worthwhile experiments" (Berg 1974). An international conference on the issues came to similar conclusions about the need for a research moratorium for the sake of public safety. Recommendations arising from conference participants led to the formation of the National Institutes... (shrink)

Time was when you could bite a tomato and not ingest fish genes. Time was when you could eat french fries and just worry about the fat and salt, not the bacterial genes that produce insecticides in the potato. Those times are over, thanks to corporate control over both genetic engineering and the lack of food-labeling. Unless you are a “hard core” consumer of organic foods, you eat genetically engineered foods everyday. While 80-90% of US consumers believe genetically engineered foods (...) should be labeled, only 3% know they already on the market.[1] Today 60-70% of the food in a grocery store contains components from genetically modified crops. Moreover, this technology was unleashed on over 45 million acres of US farmland last year alone, after having been commercially introduced only four years ago.[2] Here we will provide a brief background on the types of genetically engineered crops that are being surreptitiously forced upon consumers, then argue against their current widespread use. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THIS MESSAGE IS FOR YOU. MAYBE. by Joseph Agassi There is a mood often enough conjured in science fiction literature to be familiar to every fan, the mood of seemingly intentional yet probably remdom contact between two individuals across immense space-time expanses. The hero of a complicated chase story has lost contact with the mother planet, has long ago leuided on a strange pleuiet, emd there, right now, just (...) walking across the plaza he sees a huge poster, with a piece of commercial advertisement or some similar message of purely local import printed on it. The poster is decorated with an arabesque which puzzles him, quickens his pulse, intrigues him, fascinates him — until it hits him insteinteuneously in full force: the arabesque is a message, written in his own native language, telling him how to reestablish contact. The story, as I say, has many veurietnts. And it has, it seems, a very widespread appeal. It is couched in terms of adventure stories, but its mood is not diat of adventure. The mood is more of die one associated with the idea of the eterned return, die idea of timelessness or of time standing still (and space vanishing), the idea the western philosophies usually associate with the ideas of Nicholas, the Renaissance mystic bishop ofCusa, though it is a recurrent idea in many cultures, of the identity of the vanishingly smedl and the infinitely large. Indeed, the meeting of the message and the recipient is symbolized by the meeting of the infinite line and the point of vanishing length. Whence this universality? I suppose it is a fact of biological nature. Think of the scent a living thing, be it a fish or em emtelope, leaves behind to contact a possible mate. It is a few complex molecules in a sea of molecules of astronomical numbers: just this room contains more molecules than you can imagine. And the animal follows a long tortuous path to find its mate. According to Willietm Craig and Konrad Lorenz, an animal does not have the slightest clue what it is after. Even while building a nest it has no complete 95 96Philosophy and Literature picture of its task. In each of its stages it goes after diverse kinds of things, yet it knows not which things, let alone their inborn rigidly fixed sequence. Yet the animal in charge of a tetsk, whether of finding a mate or of finding a twig for a nest, will be resdess — say Craig and Lorenz — and move about, and try to read the message in any piece of arabesque, until one day one piece of arabesque will med«: sense and enable its finder to complete die next step in the mysterious complex task and open up die search for the next message, the next step further along die unfolding series of preordained ordeals that life is strewn widi. Consider writing proper, like my writing this message for you right now. We do not know the background to literacy, much less its actual origins, except that these were far from unique: though many cultures eire illiterate or have acquired literacy from more evolved neighbors, mere eire many places on earth where literacy evolved independently. Yet even here we see a sequence: many independent ideographic scripts, some ofthem evolving into syllabic scripts and one or two of these evolving into an alphabet proper. How and why, we do not know. There is room for speculation, though. It is hard to imagine how the very first writer conceived of the very first message he wrote without consulting his recipient first. There are a few possible explemations here. First, that writer and recipient are one: writing was a form ofmemorizing, or ofconsigning matters to memory more stable than that of the human brain — the granite rock, for instance. The ancient Egyptian god of literacy was the god of memory. Primitive shepherds use knots in their rope and cuts on their sticks as aides memoire, as bookkeeping of sorts, and scholars consider these the origins of writings. This is evidenced by the runic writings of the Norse, whose letters are images of sticks with cuts on them. Yet runic writing is alphabetic and... (shrink)

Food irradiation is a physical method of processing food (e.g. freezing, canning). It has been thoroughly researched over the last four decades and is recognized as a safe and wholesome method. It has the potential both of disinfesting dried food to reduce storage losses and disinfesting fruits and vegetables to meet quarantine requirements for export trade. Low doses of irradiation inhibit spoilage losses due to sprouting of root and tuber crops. Food- borne diseases due to contamination by pathogenic microorganisms and (...) parasites of meat, poultry, fish, fishery products and spices are on the increase. Irradiation of these solid foods can decontaminate them of pathogenic organisms and thus provide safe food to the consumer. Irradiation can successfully replace the fumigation treatment of cocoa beans and coffee beans and disinfest dried fish, dates, dried fruits, etc. One of the most important advantages of food irradiation processing is that it is a coldprocess which does not significantly alter physico-chemical characters of the treated product. It can be applied to food after its final packaging. Similar to other physical processes of food processing, (e.g. canning, freezing), irradiation is a capital intensive process. Thus, adequate product volume must be made available in order to maximize the use of the facility and minimize the unit cost of treatment. Lack of harmonization of regulations among the countries which have approved irradiated foods hampers the introduction of this technique for international trade. Action at the international level has to be taken in order to remedy this situation. One of the important limitations of food irradiation processing is its slow acceptance by consumers, due inter alia to a perceived association with radioactivity. The food industry tends to be reluctant to use the technology in view of uncertainties regarding consumer acceptance of treated foods. Several market testing and consumer acceptance studies have been carried out on food irradiation in recent years. These studies showed that, if the safety and the benefits of food irradiation were properly explained, the consumers were willing to accept irradiated foods. Considering its potential role in the reduction of post-harvest losses, providing safe supply of food and overcoming quarantine barriers, food irradiation has received wider government approvals during the last decade. There is also a trend towards increased commercialization of irradiated food. Currently, there are 47 irradiation facilities in some 23 countries being used for treating foods for commercial purposes. (shrink)

The article depicts the traditional fishing, the outdoor drying of Stockfish, and its cultural and culinary uses in a historic context and today. The fishing of the North East Arctic cod (Gadus morhua) is a sustainable coastal fishery for millennia in the North of Norway, but climate change challenges the outdoor drying of stockfish. The article follows the stockfish history during the hanseatic office in Bergen until the present trade. The early commercial production of stockfish was due (...) to urban expansion, fasting rules and the need to provide nutritious food to the poor in Northern Europe and beyond. The article follows the traces of stockfish expansion as a staple food, first to Northern Europe, later to central Europe and the Mediterranean countries, before ending up as an important food supply to West-African countries in the nineteenth century. The article explains the early Greek and Renaissance concerns for eating fish and for stockfish in particular due to dietetic and medical beliefs. Then the cultural impact of stockfish is explained by showing some examples of both living and disappearing culinary traditions. The use of lye for soaking stockfish is not only a Scandinavian tradition but a little known shared European craft and culinary practice. Battering the stockfish with a wooden hammer, the use of lye for durability and water for softening the hard fish texture was practiced for preparing stockfish. Finally, the article touches upon rules, regulations and organisations that can help strengthening and preserve the traditional craft and culinary uses of stockfish today. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Biological prospecting is being undertaken in the Antarctic and, as novel material starts to yield significantly higher commercial rewards, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties might decide to regulate it through the Antarctic Treaty System. This will be problematic since activities are already being undertaken, patents have been filed and products developed. Furthermore, there are differing perceptions of the status of the Antarctic, with some considering it global commons and others considering it the common heritage of mankind. These 2 (...) doctrines can be inferred from the rhetoric of the Treaty and its subsequent legal instruments through which human activities, including the use of resources, are managed. However, the Antarctic Treaty System does not support either in practice because activities such as fishing and bioprospecting already return an exclusive reward for effort, with no benefit-sharing arrangements. Under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Parties determine allowable catches for a fishery based on scientific assessment, and this may discharge them from providing access and benefit-sharing arrangements to the international community potentially available through other international law (e.g. the Law of the Sea Convention or the Convention on Biological Diversity). The major turning point in Antarctica came when the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities—which acknowledged the rights of the international community—failed to enter into force. Today the international community is rewarded with a relatively healthy Antarctic environment and free access to some scientific information, which are benefiting all mankind. But the international community does not get direct financial reward from Antarctic activities because access is constrained by law and by a lack of capacity. There is no mechanism for disbursing compensation to all mankind in any case, although the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties could certainly rectify this if they had the will to do so. So far they have not. (shrink)

When, if ever, is it better to spend money to improve pig welfare over chicken welfare? Which species of fish is worst off in commercial aquaculture operations? When, if ever, would humans benefit less from a policy than animals stand to lose? The answers to these questions involve making interspecies welfare comparisons—assessments of how well or poorly the members of one species are faring compared to the members of another species. It’s important to answer these questions, as governments, NGOs, (...) and private actors regularly make decisions that assume particular views about them. However, there is no accepted method for making interspecies welfare comparisons; welfare assessment tools are designed to make comparisons within species, not across them. This volume addresses this crucial gap in the literature: it proposes a methodology for making such comparisons, it puts that methodology into practice, and then reports some tentative, proof-of-concept results. This book reports the results of a collaborative, 20-month, interdisciplinary project on making interspecies welfare comparisons. It includes contributions from philosophers, neuroscientists, comparative psychologists, animal welfare scientists, and many others. Unlike many edited volumes, this book is the product of a joint enterprise with a specific, shared goal: to develop a way to make principled comparisons between courses of action that affect different kinds of animals. This book reflects the contributors’ collective view about one way to achieve that goal. (shrink)

Relying on textual, ethnographic, and environmental scholarship on Yemen and the comparative insights of research into fisheries in the premodern Mediterranean world, the present study surveys the types of marine resources that appear across a wide range of literary and documentary sources pertaining to Yemen during the reign of the Rasūlids from the early 7th/13th to the mid-9th/15th century. Although Rasūlid-generated texts pay relatively scant attention to fishing, they clearly demonstrate the interest of the Rasūlid state in both the (...) subsistence and commercial economy that fishermen procured. Moreover, when combined with the testimony of travelers and chroniclers and of iconography on a series of Rasūlid coins from the port city of Aden, these sources shed light on the inclusion of fish in Yemeni non-elite and elite diets, the place and roles of fisherfolk in Yemeni society, the maritime symbolism current in Rasūlid times, and ultimately the relationship between shores and inland centers of Rasūlid power. In aggregate this material suggests that the Rasūlid state maintained a symbiotic political and cultural relationship with fishing communities, which had direct access to and the primary role in harvesting and processing the resources in question, yet remain in the shadows of recorded history. (shrink)

War and Nature is an important, cogent, and timely book about the double‐edged nature of technology. Edmund Russell, through meticulous research, establishes a key nexus between the increased use of chemicals in war and peace during several key decades of the twentieth century and the generalized backlash against technology and its unintended consequences that occurred beginning in the mid‐1960s. He clearly places pesticides, rodenticides, herbicides, and chemical warfare agents alongside atomic energy, electronics, massive water harnessing and diversion projects, and other (...) prime examples of America's romance with progress. Thus, he joins his work with a significant body of research examining the United States's headlong plunge to embrace technology, along with sometimes belated efforts to grapple with its effects.The idea of progress has always been a distinctive factor in American identity. However, the fascination with progress was perhaps never so intense, so unreserved, and so naive as in the fifty years from 1914 to the early 1960s. During these years, as Russell points out, the pace of change was accelerated by two world wars that spawned the growth of powerful government agencies as well as commercial companies whose new products benefited richly from government‐funded research. Wartime imperatives hastened development of “miracle chemicals” that preserved the health of American soldiers, as when DDT was widely employed in the Pacific theater of war to kill malaria‐bearing mosquitoes. The result was what President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as he left office, termed the “military‐industrial complex.”Russell uses well‐chosen examples from the archives of chemical manufacturers to illustrate how defense contractors supplying electronics, atomic expertise, and other forms of technological expertise useful in warfare softened their public images by touting beneficent peacetime applications of their products. “Better Living Through Chemistry” along with “Progress Is Our Most Important Product” and other slogans familiar to citizens of the 1950s appealed not just to America's love of convenience and gadgetry. They also appealed to a fundamental U.S. belief that “modern science” would solve age‐old problems, erase perennial blights, and free people to live on a higher plane than any previously experienced by humankind.However, because defoliants, flame‐throwers, poison gases, and other chemical weapons that aided the war effort almost always conjured up negative images in the public mind, manufacturers used analogies of “victory” in war to victory over man's environment to retain a reputable and lucrative place in peacetime society.Perhaps most striking are the parallels between chemicals and atomic energy during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s in the United States. Both chemicals and atomic energy proved their awesome power in hastening victory in World War II, and both needed softer images after the war ended. The promises of disease‐free fields and enormously increased crop yields appealed to the American public, just as did the hope of electricity “too cheap to meter” and nuclear medicine that might cure cancers.When chemicals began to poison birds, fish, and other species recognized as valuable and desirable to man, when fields lost their productivity, and when illnesses arose in certain occupations that could be linked to chemical exposure, the downsides of progress became evident. America recoiled and reevaluated. Russell weaves congressional testimony together with advertisements, popular cartoons, and other ephemera to bring to life this uniquely American story. He compels the reader to ask striking questions about a nation maturing and itself asking complex questions about one of its most cherished ideals.The final irony of Russell's book may lie in the fact that it was written before the World Trade Center attack on 11 September 2001 but published just afterward, in the midst of America's anthrax episodes in the fall of the same year. The world focus on chemical and biological warfare should now provide a whole set of additional readers for this valuable book. (shrink)

From May to November 1931, the Exposition coloniale internationale was held in Paris. Publicized as a trip around the world in a single day, it was designed to stimulate investments and general enthusiasm for the colonies. Along with exotic temporary pavilions representing the various colonies, model villages inhabited by colonial natives, and pavilions representing commercial product brands and other colonial powers, the exposition included a zoo and an aquarium featuring animals from the colonies. Installing a large aquarium had been (...) a costly and difficult process, and construction was plagued by many delays and problems. But when the aquarium finally opened a few months into the exposition, it quickly became a favorite of the public. With the double mission to provide a living synthesis of the products of the warm waters of the French empire and give visitors a sense of the diversity, beauty, and economic resources of their colonial possessions, the aquarium functioned as a panorama that presented a striking visual metaphor for the empire. This article follows the aquarium during the exposition and in the years that followed. We explore its place in the history of aquaria in general and pay particular attention to its role in the exposition and within the French colonial context of the 1930s and onward. Here, both the scientists in charge of the site and the aquatic animals living in its tanks and terrariums provide a window into the relationship of marine biology, public education, consumerism, and colonialism at mid-twentieth century. (shrink)

In the first monograph in this exciting area since then, William Fish develops a comprehensive disjunctive theory, incorporating detailed accounts of the three ...

It may seem that I am simply confirming Davis’ assertion that in my view of the critical process “different interpretive strategies create completely different texts with no point of comparison” ; but the differences are not all that complete. While many readers now see a God who is more dramatically effective than Pope’s “school divine,” they still see a God who exists in a defining relationship with the figure of Satan, a Satan who is himself significantly changed from the energy-bearing (...) Byronic antihero who was for so long a “given” in the interpretive landscape. The point is, again, that changes do not occur in isolation, because the facts that have undergone change did not exist in isolation either. In the history of Milton criticism, any judgment against God is always and simultaneously a judgment for Satan ; and it follows that a reversal in one pole of the judgment cannot occur without a corresponding—that is, related—reversal in the other. Any increase in the literary “cash value” of Milton’s God will be registered at the expense of his Satan.In short, since literary judgments or observations are not made piecemeal, the process of challenging and changing them is not piecemeal either. That is why it is not “contradictory,” as Davis asserts, “to talk about recalcitrant features of a text” in the context of a thesis that makes the text’s features a function of interpretation . The source of recalcitrance or resistance is not the text as it exists independently of interpretation, but the text as an authoritative and elaborated interpretation has given it to us. I stress “elaborated” because the interpretation is not a single assertion but a complex of assertions; and when a challenge is made to the interpreted text at one point, its other points constitute a reservoir from which objections and “counterchallenges” can emerge. Thus, when someone offers a revisionist account of Milton’s God, a skeptical or unpersuaded reader will respond by observing that this account is incompatible with what we know to be true about other parts of the poem: the characterization of Satan, or of the War in Heaven, or of books 11 and 12. It is then the obligation of the revisionist critic either to demonstrate there is no incompatibility or to extend his new reading in such a way as to recharacterize those parts of the poem that seem to stand as refutations of the revisionist’s reading. He will then be working against resistance, but it will not be the resistance of something that stands outside interpretation; rather it will be the resistance offered by one interpretively produced shape to the production of another. Stanley Fish is the William Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Working on the Chain Gang: Interpretation in the Law and in Literary Criticism” and “Profession Despise Thyself: Fear and Self-Loathing in Literary Studies”. (shrink)

Introduction: Three key principles -- Sense datum theories -- Adverbial theories -- Belief acquisition theories -- Intentional theories -- Disjunctive theories -- Perception and causation -- Perception and the sciences of the mind -- Perception and other sense modalities.

In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those ...

From 1995 to 2013, Stanley Fish's provocative New York Times columns consistently generated passionate discussion and debate. In Think Again, he has assembled almost one hundred of his best columns into a thematically arranged collection with a substantial new introduction that explains his intention in writing these pieces and offers an analysis of why they provoked so much reaction. Some readers reported being frustrated when they couldn’t figure out where Fish, one of America’s most influential thinkers, stood on the controversies (...) he addressed in the essays—from atheism and affirmative action to plagiarism and postmodernism. But, as Fish says, that is the point. Opinions are cheap; you can get them anywhere. Instead of offering just another set of them, Fish analyzes and dissects the arguments put forth by different sides—in debates over free speech, identity politics, the gun lobby, and other hot-button topics—in order to explain how their arguments work or don’t work. In short, these are essays that teach you not what to think but how to think more clearly. Brief and accessible yet challenging, these essays provide all the hard-edged intellectual, cultural, and political analysis one expects from Fish. At the same time, the collection includes a number of revealing and even poignant autobiographical essays in which, as Fish says, "readers will learn about my anxieties, my aspirations, my eccentricities, my foibles, my father, and my obsessions—Frank Sinatra, Ted Williams, basketball, and Jews." Reflecting the wide-ranging interests of one of today's leading critics, this is Fish’s broadest and most engaging book to date. (shrink)

In the eyes of some of its critics, disjunctivism fails to support adequately the key claim that a particular hallucination might be indistinguishable from a certain kind of veridical perception despite the two states having nothing other than this in common. Scott Sturgeon, for example, has complained that disjunctivism ‘‘offers no positive story about hallucination at all’’ (2000: 11) and therefore ‘‘simply takes [indistinguishability] for granted’’ (2000: 12). So according to Sturgeon, what the disjunctivist needs to provide is a plausible (...) explanation of just how two mental states which have no common component might be indistinguishable for their subject and this in turn will require the telling of a positive story about hallucination. This is the goal of the present essay. (shrink)

In an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascist" are by the left--Stanley Fish would seem an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. A renowned scholar of Milton, head of the English Department of Duke University, Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the (...) culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of battle. In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. In his witty, accessible dissections of the swirling controversies over multiculturalism, affirmative action, canon revision, hate speech, and legal reform, he neatly eviscerates both the conservatives' claim to possession of timeless, transcendent values, and the intellectual left's icons of equality, tolerance, and non-discrimination. He argues that while conservative ideologues and liberal stalwarts might disagree vehemently on what is essential to a culture, or to a curriculum, both mistakenly believe that what is essential can be identified apart from the accidental circumstances to which the essential is ritually opposed. In the book's first section, which includes the five essays written for Fish's celebrated debates with Dinesh D'Souza, Fish turns his attention to the neoconservative backlash. In his introduction, Fish writes, "Terms that come to us wearing the label 'apolitical'--'common values', 'fairness', 'merit', 'color blind', 'free speech', 'reason'--are in fact the ideologically charged constructions of a decidedly political agenda. I make the point not in order to level an accusation, but to remove the sting of accusation from the world 'politics' and redefine it as a synonym for what everyone inevitably does." Fish maintains that the debate over political correctness is an artificial one, because it is simply not possible for any party or individual to occupy a position above or beyond politics. Regarding the controversy over the revision of the college curriculum, Fish argues that the point is not to try to insist that inclusion of ethnic and gender studies is not a political decision, but "to point out that any alternative curriculum--say a diet of exclusively Western or European texts--would be no less politically invested." In Part Two, Fish follows the implications of his arguments to a surprising rejection of the optimistic claims of the intellectual left that awareness of the historical roots of our beliefs and biases can allow us, as individuals or as a society, to escape or transcend them. Specifically, he turns to the movement for reform of legal studies, and insists that a dream of a legal culture in which no one's values are slighted or declared peripheral can no more be realized than the dream of a concept of fairness that answers to everyone's notions of equality and jsutice, or a yardstick of merit that is true to everyone's notions of worth and substance. Similarly, he argues that attempts to politicize the study of literature are ultimately misguided, because recharacterizations of literary works have absolutely no impact on the mainstream of political life. He concludes his critique of the academy with "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," an extraordinary look at some of the more puzzing, if not out-and-out masochistic, characteristics of a life in academia. Penetrating, fearless, and brilliantly argued, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech captures the essential Fish. It is must reading for anyone who cares about the outcome of America's cultural wars. (shrink)

Together Professor Bush and Mr. Mailloux present a problem in interpretation not unlike those that were the occasion of the paper they criticize: Professor Bush takes the first section of the paper more seriously than I do, and Mr. Mailloux complains that I do not take it seriously enough. In their different ways they seem to miss or slight the playfulness of my performance, the degree to which it is an attempt to be faithful to my admitted unwillingness to come (...) to, or rest on, a point. Professor Bush seems to think that I am mounting an attack on the Variorum. Let me say at the outset that I intended no such attack, that I am sorry if anything I wrote gave that impression, and that I regret any offense that may have been taken. Professor Bush and I view the Variorum from different perspectives, both of which seem to me to be perfectly legitimate. He views it as a document, while I view it as a text. As a document, as a record and history of research and interpretation, it is a model of its kind, full, judicious, and above all, honest. The editors pay us the compliment of not pretending to an impossible objectivity. They leave us the valuable record of their own occasional disagreements, and thus suggest that they know very well that theirs is an interim report. My inquiry is into the significance of that report; it is not a brief against the compiling of its materials but an attempt to put to them a question the editors quite properly do not ask: what does the history of the effort to determine the meaning of Milton's poems mean? In short, I am extending the scope of interpretation to include the interpreters themselves and, rather than attacking the Variorum, taking one step further the task it has so well begun. Stanley E. Fish's "How to Do Things with Austin and Searle: Speech Act Theory and Literary Criticism" was published in the Special Centennial Issue of Modern Language Notes, Summer 1976. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Facts and Fictions: A Reply to Ralph Rader" , "Interpreting the Variorum" , "Normal Circumstances, Literal Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes without Saying, and Other Special Cases" , "A Reply to John Reichert; or, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Interpretation" , and "One More Time". (shrink)

It might seem at this point that I am courting a contradiction: If antiprofessionalism is a form of professional behavior and if professional behavior covers the field , then how can I fault Bate for using antiprofessionalism to further a professional project? By collapsing the distinction between activity that is professionally motivated and activity motivated by a commitment to abstract and general values, have I not deprived myself of a basis for making judgments, since one form of activity would seem (...) to be no different from or better than any other? The answer is no, because the consequence of turning everything into professionalism is not to deny value but to redistribute it. One deconstructs an opposition not by reversing the hierarchy of its poles but by denying to either pole the independence that makes the opposition possible in the first place. If my argument that there can be no literary criticism or pedagogy that is not a form of professionalism, it is also that there can be no form of professionalism that is not an extension of some value or set of values. Whereas before one was asked to choose between professionalism and some category of pure value , the choice can now be seen as a choice between different versions of professionalism, each with its attendant values. To say that antiprofessionalism is a form of professional behavior is not to have closed the discussion but to have identified the basis on which it can continue by identifying the questions that should now be asked: What kind of professional behavior is antiprofessionalism? and What are its consequences? The answer is that, at least in its literary form, it urges impossible goals and therefore has the consequence of making people ashamed of what they are doing. The psychological distress that marks this profession, the fact that so many of its members exist in a shamefaced relationship with the machinery that enables their labors, is in part attributable, I think, to literary antiprofessionalism, which is, as a form of professional behavior, almost always damaging. Stanley Fish’s most recent work is “Wrong Again: A Reply to Ronald Dworking,” Texas Law Review . His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida”. (shrink)

He had made it all up, he said, and gloated that his "prank" proved that sociologists and humanists who spoke of science as a "social construction" didn't know what they were talking about. Acknowledging the ethical issues raised by his deception, Professor Sokal declared it justified by the importance of the truths he was defending from postmodernist attack: "There is a world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise?".

Stanley Fish argues here for a narrower conception of academic freedom, one that does not grant academics a legal status different from other professionals.

Recent attempts to show that functional processing entails the presence of phenomenal consciousness have failed to deliver the kind of answers to the “problems of consciousness” that anti-materialists insist the functionalist must provide. I will illustrate this by focusing on the claims that there is a special “Hard Problem” of consciousness and an “explanatory gap” between functional and phenomenal facts. I then argue that if we supplement the functionalist stories with a relationalist conception of phenomenal properties, we can begin to (...) see the shape of a naturalistic theory of phenomenal consciousness that will provide intuitively compelling responses to these problems. (shrink)

Under the general heading of what we might loosely call emotional states, a familiar distinction can be drawn between emotions (strictly so-called) and moods. In order to judge under which of these headings a subject’s emotional episode falls, we advance a question of the form: What is the subject’s emotion of or about? In some cases (for example fear, sadness, and anger) the provision of an answer is straightforward: the subject is afraid of the loose tiger, or sad about England’s (...) poor performance in the World Cup, or angry with her errant child. Although the ways we find natural to talk in such situations can alter (afraid of, sad about, angry with, and so on), in each case the emotion has what Ronald de Sousa, following Wittgenstein, calls a target—“an actual particular to which that emotion relates.” (de Sousa, 1987, p.116). (shrink)