Boycott South African Wine!? Environmentalists Have Crossed the Line!!

July 5th, 2009 Stephen Satterfield Posted in WINE POLITICS |

On June 26, the UK Wine publication, Decanter reported US-based environmentalists Sea Shepherds, called for a boycott of South African wines. The organization is responding to the butchering of over 40 whales on the coast of South Africa led by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who are also demanding Mike Meyer, president of South Africa’s Marine Coastal Management (MCM) step down.

I am reluctant to even write about this matter, because it only brining press to this ridiculous call to action, but it’s too much. The proposed boycott shows how detached this organization is to South Africa. Launching a baseless attack on an industry that employs 260,000 people, almost all of whom are below the poverty line, is cruel. South Africa is unquestionably the most environmentally progressive wine growing region, with a significant part of their entire (fragile) global positioning promoting biodiversity. The Biodiversity & Wine Initiative has been a very successful organization established to ensure conversation of wildlife and promote low impact farming.

The grossest part about this is that we are talking about whales. When you attack the South African wine industry, you’re attacking a group of workers who are living in extreme poverty, no education, and few with access to running water and electricity. The work of our Foundation is to raise the standard of life for other human beings in this important commercial industry. Mike Meyer is obviously not a good person, and anyone who brutally kills whales-or any animal-purely for sport is a sick person. But blindly calling for the boycott of a product that is utterly unrelated, and (barely) feeds hundreds of thousands of poor farmers is equally irresponsible. Wine in South Africa provides one job for every 92 cases of wine sold. I’m curious what Sea Shepherd, based in Washington, DC has done to create jobs in Africa, or even in America.

It may be cute to call for a boycott to bring attention to your cause. But those of us who make a living on the South African wine industry take the word boycott very seriously. You see, the last boycott ended in 1994 because of the ending of something called apartheid. And if you don’t understand the magnitude of the apartheid in the context of the death of 40 whales, I think you are as sick as Mike Meyer.

-Stephen A. Satterfield