What’s on your dinner plate? Yellow perch or rainbow trout? If yes, how often does it show up on your family’s menu? Do you know if it’s wild-caught or farm-raised?
A new Sea Grant consumer survey is trying to ferret out some answers to these questions, and more. It’s part of a new campaign to raise awareness about the safety and sustainability of local Wisconsin fish from neighborhood grocery stores.
A good place to begin that awareness-building is to learn what questions consumers may have about things like how to select and prepare local fish, nutritional benefits and health risks, and how fish are raised or harvested commercially.
Kathy Schmitt Kline, an outreach coordinator, is heading up the project that will deploy the survey in Madison-area grocery stores as a pilot study beginning the first week of May and running through the next few months. Survey results will inform the development of websites, fact sheets and other products to provide science-based information to answer consumers’ local-fish consumption questions.
The first round of surveys will begin May 4-5 at Metcalfe’s Market in Madison’s Hilldale Mall. Shoppers who stop to answer survey questions will receive a UW Sea Grant tote bag–and the knowledge that they’ve helped the cause of safe and sustainable seafood in Wisconsin.
