European Union member states cannot wait for the European Commission to revise the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) before tackling its “unethical” discard protocols, warned Peter Dill, CEO of German seafood giant Deutsche See GmbH.
The debate over the EU’s controversial regulations on discards took center stage at last week’s North Atlantic Seafood Forum (NASF), held in Oslo, Norway, as speakers and delegates discussed the supply and demand pressures being put on wild stocks and farmed fish production.
Discards are one of the core components of the ongoing CFP review and subsequent reform, and improvements to the policy are expected to be introduced at the start of 2013.
But Dill and many other industry leaders have voiced their disgust at the length of time it will take to tackle the “senseless dumping” of prime seafood.
“I don’t just think discards are bad, they are wrong, unethical and they’re something we cannot accept,” Dill told NASF delegates. “But what I really can’t accept is that it will take three, four or even five years to stop discards. That’s ridiculous. As an industry we need to stand up and force the change. Three or four years is way too long.
“Imagine that you run a company and you throw away 50 percent of what you produce, what would happen?” asked Dill. “You would be bankrupt within weeks or months, but that’s exactly what is happening in the case of discards — as much as half of what is caught is thrown overboard.
“As a European, I’m ashamed by the amount of time it will take to change things, especially if we are really serious about this issue,” he said.
The EU has estimated that between 40 percent and 60 percent of fish caught by vessels in the mixed-fishery area of the North Sea, for example, is discarded.
A key bone of contention with such fisheries is that if all EU fishermen were to bring all their catches to harbor, which effectively does away with discards, what would happen to the market and what could be done to ensure that markets do not collapse?
Dill suggested it wouldn’t be too difficult to come up with a new system that outlaws discards and cited Norway and Iceland as two countries that have successfully implemented such schemes.
In fact, Deutsche See, which is one of Germany’s largest seafood processors with EUR 400 million (USD 545 million) in annual sales, implemented its own experimental project three years ago to demonstrate that there is a way to move forward without discards.
Called German Sea, the study was sanctioned by the EU and allowed three boats to enter the North Sea and to land all its catches at harbor. German Sea then bought all the boats’ non-quota fish and put it on the market.
Dill conceded that such a scheme wouldn’t work for all fisheries but it could be easily adapted to work for many EU-relevant fisheries.
“It’s interesting the EU is getting its act together on things like the bluefin tuna trade and has implemented procedures like the IUU catch certificates that aren’t easy to follow, but has done nothing about discards,” he explained.
