Fish Fight campaign gets big endorsement

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s new Fish Fight campaign has caught the eye of frozen seafood giant Findus Group, which on Friday threw its support behind the initiative.

The campaign is designed to raise public awareness of fish wastefully discarded at sea. It features a website, www.fishfight.net, that encourages viewers to sign a letter addressed to European Union Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki encouraging her to reduce discards as part of Common Fisheries Policy reform. As of late Friday, nearly 29,000 people had signed the petition.

“The fish are being thrown away because to land them would be illegal. Only a tiny portion of these fish will survive,” said Fearnley-Whittingstall, citing an EU report that found 40 to 60 percent of all fish caught by trawlers are discarded. “For obvious reasons, fishermen hate discards. Conservationists hate them, too. Even politicians don’t like them.”

“We welcome this new campaign, which will help improve awareness of one of the most important sustainability issues in EU fisheries,” said Leendert Den Hollander, managing director of Findus Group UK and Ireland, on Friday.

“We all agree that discarding is a senseless waste of precious resources, we also have to remember this is a very complex problem to solve. Driven by our Fish for Life approach, our business has been actively lobbying for improvement for a number of years, and we are acutely aware there are no easy answers,” said Hollander.

“We’re hopeful therefore that, given the right regulatory reform, change can be achieved,” he added. “Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s campaign adds valuable momentum to that change.”

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