A celebrity-fronted TV campaign designed to encourage UK consumers to switch to sustainable seafood has provoked a flurry of reaction from stakeholders.
Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is set to launch his Fish Fight campaign on Channel 4 on Tuesday, raising awareness of fish discards as well as the three most commonly consumed species in the United Kingdom — tuna, cod and salmon.
Anticipating consumer reaction to the program, Scottish Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead on Tuesday issued a comment, highlighting Scotland’s efforts to reduce discards. “On the European stage, Scotland is speaking out the loudest against the discarding of marketable fish,” he said. “In spite of restrictions imposed by EU policies, Scotland has pioneered ‘catch quotas,’ whereby fishermen land all the fish they catch without wasteful discards, winning plaudits across Europe.”
Fish discards are by no means a new problem for the European seafood industry, and for months the issue has been high on the agenda to reform the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Reform is slated for 2012, with EU members currently consulting on the thorny issue.
For example, a swathe of fisheries ministers have shown support for the use of on-board closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to track harvests and discards.
Last month, the World Wildlife Fund praised the recent agreement between the EU and Norway to allow fishermen to land more fish in return for increased quotas. The move aims to minimize discards, particularly for cod and whiting. The agreement came after a report in December from the Scottish government that claimed one-third of the fish caught in the North Sea is discarded.
Also reacting to Channel 4’s Fish Fight program, Sean Toal, commercial director for the Co-operative, said on Tuesday the UK retailer is “calling on [EU Fisheries] Commissioner [Maria] Damanaki, members of the European Parliament and state governments to use their influence to stop this unacceptable and shameful practice [of fish discards].”
According to a statement, the Co-op is supporting the Cumbria Discard Reduction Programme coordinated by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). The Co-operative is co-funding the project, which will work with the Cumbrian nephrops (scampi) fishery to reduce discards in the Irish Sea in 2011.
A similar Cefas project, Project 50%, “has already been very successful in reducing discards of the Devon beam-trawl fishery, with discard rates falling by more than 52 percent,” according to the Co-op. Both 50% and the Cumbrian project were commissioned and funded by the government.
Click here to view SeafoodSource Contributing Editor Nicki Holmyard’s commentary on the Fish Fight program, titled “Will farmed salmon ever get a fair shake?”
