A campaign headed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - of River Cottage up the road near Axminster - is gaining ground.
"How important to you is sourcing and sustainability when you buy fish?"
Hugh's fish fight takes Tesco to task | Life and style | guardian.co.uk
Latest news from Fish Fight
see more news
Sunday Times: The cost of luxury seafood has soared, driven by disease, low catches & growing demand (£) http://t.co/05GnhF2CxO
NEWSGuardian: Cod stocks recover after years of overfishing
BLOGCFP agreement reached in Brussels!
And to follow up on that last story:
For years,
campaigners have been fighting against industrial fishing in European waters and last week, at long last, they
had something to celebrate. Their target has been the huge factory ships that
hoover up everything in their wake, discarding the dead fish they don't want –
often half the catch – and returning to port with their quotas met the most
profitable way. The result has not just been dwindling fish stocks – the entire
marine ecosystem is under assault, including the coastal fishing communities
that depend on it for their livelihood.
No one European country can make a
difference by itself: fish do not respect borders. In any case, the danger for
any one country acting unilaterally to husband fish stocks and ban the practice
of discarding dead fish is that if others do not follow suit it will be the
sucker. It will have hurt its own fishing interests just to benefit others.
This is a problem that can only be solved by European countries acting
together.
Last Thursday at 3am, EU members
states finally agreed the
outlines of a tough Common
Fisheries Policy.
First, there was a commitment for the first time to set quotas – based on hard
scientific advice – that aim to go beyond stabilising fish stocks to achieving
growth. Crucially, from 2015, boats will be forbidden from discarding unwanted
dead fish, starting with species such as mackerel that live in the upper oceans,
and extended to all fish types by 2020. Every country will have to submit a
detailed plan for how it intends to meet its quota, but making its own decision
about which types of fishing it will favour. But with discards effectively
banned – inevitably, under British pressure, boats will still be allowed to
discard 5% of their catch after 2020 – there will be an inbuilt bias against
industrial fishing. This is a major move to help stocks.
Battle-hardened campaigners could only blink in
semi-disbelief. Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall, the
leader of Fish Fight, who has signed up more than 860,000 supporters to work
for tougher quotas and a ban on discards, hailed the deal as a "tremendous
achievement". Even Greenpeace managed a grudging congratulation: "For
all its loopholes and sluggish timelines the policy has the potential to turn
Europe's destructive and oversized fishing industry into a sustainable, low-impact
sector." The fishing industry acknowledged a corner had been turned.
.
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