This looks like a really great product. Im excited to see such a well respected company providing an amazing product. Hopefully this is the beginning of a great relationship between salmon and patagonia. The accompanying video is a great view of the history and the sustainability of the product.
——————————————————————————————————————————————
It has been a dozen years since Patagonia blazed a trail with efforts to increase the apparel industry’s use of organic cotton. Now, the company is setting its sights beyond apparel and outdoor gear to transform the packaged-food industry. Today with the introduction of three flavors of Wild Salmon Jerky, it’s launching Patagonia Provisions, a new line of sustainable foods. Bloomberg Businessweek spoke with Eric Neuron, who is heading up the effort, to learn how the company is managing spawning seasons, selecting jerky flavors, and trying to save a salmon species in the process.This is a far cry from clothes and gear. What’s the history behind this effort?Ever since our founder, Yvon Chouinard, started selling clothes, he was always really interested in the food. He’s a climber—and in rock climbing, it can take days to scale a mountain and you can only take so much weight with you. So he spent a lot of time thinking about how he packs food and what food he brings with him.What did it take to source this new product?Yvon developed relationships in the Skeena watershed in Northern British Columbia, which has no dams. Millions and millions of wild fish still come through, but they are being threatened, just like they are in the rest of the world. We’ve partnered with the Kossler family along the watershed, and we’ve helped fund a processing facility to create value-added salmon products like salmon jerky. What we are trying to do is to show the industry that we are only using methods where there is little “by-catch” [in which non-target fish get caught in commercial nets] and are catching upstream of the stocks that are threatened. We hope to push the industry away from farming because it’s one of the biggest threats to wild salmon. They produce a ton of disease in the farms, and when the wild salmon swim past the farms, they get sick with things like fish leukemia. [Patagonia has posted a video with further info on the sourcing.]
via Patagonia Swims Upstream With New Salmon Jerky – Businessweek.
Related articles
- Internet Bycatch | Hatcheries vs. Wild Salmon – NYTimes.com (juneautek.com)
- Is the End of Salmon Near? (juneautek.com)
- Patagonia Please (bizgovsociii.wordpress.com)
- Trend Alert: Smoked Salmon (fabsugar.com)