The Taste of Nova Scotia Lobster Award
Monday, July 25th, 2011
Taste of Nova Scotia and Food Day Canada are pleased to announce the award for Most Creative Use of Nova Scotia Lobster.
The lobster industry is the largest fishery by landed value in Canada with export market value approaching 1 billion dollars in 2010.
We want to see which restaurants and chefs use our local, sustainable and nutritious (lobster contains healthy amounts of iron, zinc, calcium, and iodine, as well as vitamins A, B, and B6) Nova Scotia lobster in the most creative way.
Menus will be selected from all submitted, then judged by the Food Day Canada Panel of Canadian culinary experts.
Tracing your lobster directly to the harvester – two exciting new programs launch in Canada
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
Consumers today want to know where the food they eat comes from to ensure it is safe and nutritious for their families. The Canadian lobster industry has reacted with two projects that will help tell the iconic story of the lobster fishery in Canada and show consumers exactly who caught their lobster and where it came from.
The Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters has embarked on a pilot project that will allow consumers to learn more about where their lobster is harvested, landed and shipped. Harvesters in various ports around Eastern Canada are banding some of their catch with an orange tag labelled “This Fish” that includes a unique number and website. A restaurant patron in Los Angeles who is served one of these lobsters can immediately pull up the website on their smart phone, punch in the unique ID and learn all about the lobster they are eating.
Check out www.thisfish.info for more information.
The province of Quebec has an excellent program that promotes all locally produced or harvested products called “Aliments Du Quebec”. Lobster harvesters in the Gaspe region and Magdalen Islands have developed a special tag and band that they are also using that will take the consumer to a website with a unique ID number and show you a video of the vessel and captain who caught that lobster. The harvesters in Quebec have also invested in a unique new system to register their catch using an “E-Log” system which is essentially a small personal computer on each boat that transmits the catch data directly to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and links with the data from shore buyers.
For more information please visit www.alimentsduquebec.com
While still in their infancy these projects allow the unique story of how Canadian lobster is caught to be told directly to our customers. Live shippers are embracing this concept and are using it with customers who appreciate this type of traceability. This also provides an excellent opportunity for achieving better prices for harvesters and live shippers alike and a new and exciting way for the industry to collaborate and work together.
Welcome to the new Lobster Council of Canada website
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
Welcome to the new Lobster Council of Canada website and my first blog. When our design team at MT&L started to work on the new website we all felt it was important to have a site that was active and provides useful information for consumers of premium quality Canadian lobster products and also for members of the lobster industry in Canada – this is our goal so I look forward to your comments and feedback.
The new site is meant to provide useful consumer buying and preparing information (with thanks to our partners from the provinces at tastelobster.ca) and also relevant information for the lobster industry in Canada about the Lobster Council, our mandate, activities and plans. The consumer facing information will be available without a password and we have set up a “members” section for which a password will be required to retrieve industry specific information. Getting a password will be easy so I encourage anyone from the Canadian lobster industry to follow the easy steps and you will be given a password.
My plan will be to post a fresh blog once a week – more often if possible – about things that are happening in the lobster industry in Canada…stories about marketing, new products, harvesting, processing/shipping, challenges and successes. I would like to feature guest blogs from anyone who feels they have a positive story to tell so I welcome your contact and ideas. If you take a neat video from your boat please send it to me, notice a Canadian product in a supermarket in Florida that piques your interest, take a photo and send to me. I will post as much as I can and try to keep the information fresh and relevant to this dynamic and exciting industry.
- Geoff Irvine
Executive Director, Lobster Council of Canada