Bringing sustainable seafood to UN Week: Good food, good music, and good company
Fishcoin, SDG2 Advocacy Hub, James Beard Foundation, and The Chef’s Manifesto hosted a UN Week Storied Seafood Event and worked with celebrity Chef Ali Mandhry to provide shrimp tacos for the Global Citizen VIP tent
In late September, the Fishcoin team was in New York City for events surrounding the United Nations General Assembly. We hosted a Storied Seafood event where we made some exciting announcements, attended panels and forums on food systems, and participated in Global Citizen where we sourced traceable and sustainable seafood for the VIP tent catering.
Storied Seafood at UN Week
We kicked the week off with our Storied Seafood event hosted at Freeman’s Restaurant with SDG2AdvocacyHub, James Beard Foundation, and the Chef’s Manifesto team. Top Chefs from around the world came together to create dishes using traceable seafood and sustainable ingredients.
The amazing dishes throughout the night truly highlighted that where our food comes from matters, how it effects local communities and the environment matters, and that all food has a story. The Chefs Manifesto framework is primed to make significant impact in the on-going chef-based action to contribute to the sustainable food future. Their outlined action plan lays out how chefs can contribute to this movement to get the private sector, government and civil society on board.
We were honored to work with such talented and passionate chefs, including Chef Michael from Nigeria, Chef Arthur from London, and Chef Anahita from India. Each Chef created dishes inspired by their local culture, aligning strongly with Chef’s Manifesto Action 5: Celebration of local & seasonal food.
Chefs sat at the table with guests, facilitating conversations about food, SDG2, sustainability, and their dishes. Conversations throughout the night often circled back to how to ensure the ingredients Chefs use truly embody the Chef’s Manifesto Actions. Our solution is to create food systems that allow for data collection and traceability from harvest to plate.
Data collection and data sharing benefit people across all sectors and all levels. It protects the livelihoods of farmers and fishers, the nutrition of producer communities as well as the global community, and the environment. Access to this data also helps fishers and farmers know when to grow or when to harvest, informs policy and government action for nutrition intervention, and achieves sustainable agriculture and fishing practices, therefore protecting livelihoods and the environment.
Traceable seafood and data sharing through the Fishcoin Network can accelerate adoption and impact for a sustainable food future, and chef’s are the ideal advocates to get this message out there. Fishcoin was proud to provide data-backed seafood for the Storied Seafood event including Naked Seafood’s shrimp from Louisiana, Hudson Valley Fish Farm’s Steelhead Trout from New York, and Northline Seafood’s coho salmon from Alaska. Dishes were served alongside their Fish Trax QR codes, which guests could scan to explore the journey their seafood took to get to their plates. The QR codes were a great digital tool to use to engage people with their seafood and make the food’s story tangible and trustworthy through the use of data.
The dinner brought together SDG2 advocates from across food, technology, and policy to showcase how data sharing technology in the Fishcoin ecosystem can bring the Chef’s Manifesto to life, simultaneously combatting hunger, fueling sustainable livelihoods, and protecting our ocean’s biodiversity. However, none of this would be possible without the incentive structures the Fishcoin Network will provide to ensure data collection at all levels throughout supply chains and nutrition interventions. Fishers and fish farmers collect this data in return for mobile top-ups or even GSM powered solar energy, as Steve Johanns from Veriown explained during the event’s presentation.
Throughout the night, we felt incredibly thankful for our partners and friends. The Fishcoin Network would not be possible without the level of collaboration and passion our partner group has brought to the table. Chefs, SDG2 advocates, or politicians by themselves can’t do everything but everyone can do something.
That is why this was the perfect opportunity for us to announce recent-game changing partnerships. The night culminated with Paul Newnham and Mitchell Davis making the announcement that the UN’s SDG2 Advocacy Hub and James Beard Foundation have officially partnered with Fishcoin. This level of commitment from Chefs will springboard the Fishcoin mission of traceability and sustainability into public awareness, and make significant impact in future food systems.
Along with the partnership, Fishcoin is excited to share that we will allocate 1% of FISH tokens to the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, furthering our commitment to tackle SDG2 and use technology and data to fight world hunger. Thank you to everyone who made the night a success. We are honored to have connected with the change makers in the room and show them that seafood traceability is possible, and we are going to lead the way.
A week of events
Events continued for the rest of the week, providing engaging and motivating conversations about how to transform food systems to be more sustainable, equitable, and regenerating. We attended EAT’s Food System Approaches to the Prevention of NCDs at the United Nations Headquarters, Kellogg’s and SDG2Advocacy Hub’s Transforming Food Systems to Drive Impact on SDG2, BCFN Foundation International Forum on Food and Nutrition, and more.
Global Citizen
More than 60,000 people attended the seventh annual Global Citizen Festival in Central Park following UN Week. The event featured speakers like New York Governor Cuomo, Jeff Sachs, and Kerry Kennedy, who called out the ongoing racial and economic disparities in the United State’s criminal justice system. Sexual assault and gender inequality issues were highlighted by musicians Janelle Monáe and Janet Jackson, a timely topic given the recent Kavanaugh hearings in the United States.
During the event, the Fishoin team watched performances and speeches from the VIP tent where we served celebrity Chef Ali’s sustainable and traceable Grilled Shrimp Tacos. The bite-sized tacos flew off their stands and were the biggest hit at the event (besides the mini donuts!). The recipe for the tacos was provided along with a QR code telling the story of how the Naked Seafood shrimp made it to the VIP tent all the way from Louisiana.
There were a lot of familiar faces at the Global Citizen VIP tent, including Martin Luther King Jr. III, Daymond John from NBC’s Shark Tank and Senators Jeff Flake and Chris Coons was particularly excited about Fishcoin and the potential to trace seafood back to the source.
We were honored to be part of Global Citizen’s collaboration with the SDG2 Advocacy Hub to integrate sustainability with the food service for the event. We feel that sustainable catering is often overlooked but important niche in the market. Sustainable catering connect a Zero Poverty message between the on-stage and a Zero Hunger experience providing the audience with Sustainable Kenyan Shrimp Nachos.
Overall, we had a fantastic time at UN Week learning from others and sharing our story and vision. We are excited to move forward with new partnerships and connections from the week.
Interested in becoming a Fishcoin partner?
Companies and organizations throughout the seafood industry are signing up almost daily to be rollout partners in the Fishcoin ecosystem. If you would like to know more about joining our community of partners please read through our white paper, and contact our team.
