Darden is one of the largest seafood purchasers in the world. We serve over 300 million meals a year and purchase over 90 million pounds of seafood, worth over $ 750 million. You can understand that we strongly support the concept and practice of sustainable use. It is our business.

Sustainable Use! What could possibly be wrong with the concept of using the earth's natural resources for people today in a manner and fashion that guarantees there will be resources aplenty for those who come after us in the future?

I should tell you that aside from my career interest in sustainable use, I also hunt and fish. So I can say with no equivocation, that both my vocation and avocation depend on the responsible use of the earth's natural re-sources. That's the definition of an activist, someone who can combine work and play and get paid for it.

I am honored to stand before you today. But I must confess that when I was first invited to speak by our host, Eugene Lapointe, I thought long and hard about the message I would bring to you. The more I thought, the greater my apprehension grew at the prospects of fulfilling this task.

You are the experts in this field. You understand the science. You develop the methodologies for sustainable resource use. You develop the models. You spend time in the field doing your research. You know the data better than anyone does. And most important, you can see the benefits of sustainable use as well as the potential for disaster should its principles fail to be applied.

So here I stand before one of the most prestigious collections of men and women steeped in the science, the logic, the common sense support and the philosophy of sustainable use trying to decide what I can say that you don't already know. Then the thought struck me. As we gather here, at the close of the 20th Century, we, who espouse the principles of sustainable use, are being vilified in the world's press. We are being called "callous," "insensitive," "cruel," "wasteful," "corporate robber barons," and worse by environmental and animal rights activists. Politicians seek to gain public favor by rebuking us. The environmental groups want to regulate and police us and they want us to pay them for doing both. What a privilege!

We seek to feed people, to help them build homes, to provide them energy, in short, to improve the quality of their lives. And for that we are labeled the "bad guys." "Why is this so" is the question that screams to be answered.

Briefly, I want to attempt to give you my view as to why this is the case and how we can begin to reverse this situation. And reverse it we must for our businesses, for our colleagues, and for our planet.

Environmentalists raise huge sums of money by stating that the alternative to sustainable use is no use. Their rhetoric portrays their ideal earth as a Rousseau-like "peaceable kingdom" where lambs and lions and fish and sharks cavort together. They dream of turning Africa and Alaska and the oceans into vast animal sanctuaries free of human interference. Theirs is an idyllic planet filled with cuddly animals and devoid of people.

That is their fallacy. And that is their fatal flaw. It's their great and deadly lie. People do exist and people, even animal rights and environmental activists, must use the earth and its resources.