Mark Godfrey

Contributing Editor

Mark Godfrey is an Irish journalist covering the agriculture and fisheries sectors in Asia, with a focus on China. Proficient in Mandarin, he has frequently traveled across China's fisheries and aquaculture regions and learned the inner workings of China's corporate world during a nearly three-year stint at the Financial Times' “China Confidential” publication. He has also reported widely across Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. He has educational certificates in agriculture and food science, as well as Mandarin.


Author Archive

Published on
March 19, 2024

Marine ecologists have questioned the value of a newly proposed Irish marine protected area (MPA), and environmental groups have warned that there needs to be effective engagement with the fishing industry for the zone to be successful.

While welcoming the proposed MPA – covering more than 305,000 hectares of marine waters off Wexford on Ireland’s east coast – in principle, Irish NGO coalition Fair Seas has called for

Read More
Published on
March 18, 2024

China is prioritizing a free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2024, which would give Saudi Arabia low-duty access to the Chinese market for its exports of shrimp. The Gulf Cooperation Council is a trade bloc consisting of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. China has been negotiating a free trade deal with the GCC since 2005, but  China has tightened its political bonds with the

Read More
Published on
March 15, 2024

French oyster producer and exporter Huitres Lambert increased its shipments to China from 27 tons  in 2016 to 146 tons in 2023, according to an interview with company executives on French TV.

Huitres Lambert is based in Marennes-Oléron on the coast of the French region Charente-Maritime. It is located on an estuary just off the Bay of Biscay the largest oyster cultivation base in Europe which has production accounting

Read More
Published on
March 12, 2024

Some of the world’s largest retailers have been confirmed to be vendors of seafood sourced from Chinese tuna company Zhejiang Ocean Family (ZOF), which has recently become the focus of an Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) report on human rights abuses.

Drawing on interviews with Indonesian migrant workers who staffed ZOF vessels in recent years, the EJF has detailed labor abuse and illegal fishing such as shark finning, as well as

Read More
Published on
March 8, 2024
China’s seafood industry has the government’s full backing to expand, judging from comments made at China’s annual National People’s Congress. In remarks at the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing on 5 March, Chinese Premier Li Qiang spoke of strengthening China’s food security, including continuing a policy of backing the country’s distant-water fishing sector, which the government supports with generous subsidies. “We… Read More