MAC a failure?

[mattb]

"As of January 1, 2008 Reef Check has reluctantly withdrawn support from the Marine Aquarium Council's certification program due to its failure, however we continue to believe that many elements of the program can be usefully applied to management of the marine aquarium trade, and we continue to work with the trade to try to encourage this use."

ReefCheck is an organization whose mission is to protect and rehabilitate coral reefs. http://reefcheck.org/
MAC - http://www.aquariumcouncil.org/

[patent]

All Macs are a failure. Buy a PC.

O wait, different thread. Sorry.

[RogersCG]

Looks like a pretty big loss to MAC. Nothing on what exactly the 'failure' was in reference to?

[mattb]

I know pretty vague. MAC was all about certifying all the people in the process involved in getting livestock to the end customer, collector to retailer. Well, if you look at our LFS, you won't see any MAC certified animals... I don't think they got any critical mass. Some of the wholesalers are even misusing the MAC certified, stating that they are MAC certified. If they even bothered to read more about it, they'd know that the MAC certification applies only to specific livestock, not a particular company.

Ultimately, its the consumers fault, we're not asking for this from our LFS/retailers. We all talk about our conservation efforts of this hobby (a joke in my opinion), but don't even both to inquire into purchasing certified livestock.

I'd be interested to hear from the LFS that are members if they get inquires into MAC certified animals.....

[mattb]

All Macs are a failure. Buy a PC.

O wait, different thread. Sorry.

hehehe! Hater!

[christensonjes]

I heard on a podcast from the MAC president, or whatever he is called, that the reason it is going so slow is because they thought they could go into these foreign islands and get them certified in 3 months. He said they have been working on some islands for 2 years now to get them certified. There are many factors into these island nations that they werent prepared for.

[mattb]

do you have a link?!? This information came from the coral list, a news list for many scientists to share info ask questions, etc. I'd think this is a tough sell to these developing nations... Raise your prices, collect less and learn a new way, when your competition, the hut next door, is sell a higher volume for less....

Ultimately, IMHO, this sort of thing needs to be driven by the consumers, not some NGO.

[REEFSTOCK]

There is a lot of bad news out there about MAC. It sucks when bad deeds are done in a good name.

[Becky]

I try to bring as many MAC fish at a time when I order from QM.
I keep all papers that come with the fish On my table so that I can show them to people when we are talking fishies :)
I think the idea behind them is great and I wish all places would have that.