Fish industry bites back at MCS provenance plans
Calling for packaging improvements yesterday, an MCS spokesman said that labels on processed fish products, as well as whole fish, should include the sea area where the fish was caught, the method by which it was caught and the species of fish.
He said “When you buy a fish pie there may be no details of where the fish came from on it. We just want transparency, we are focused on retailers as they sell up to 70% of the fish in the UK but restaurants and food to go outlets also need to improve labelling for sure.”
However, Philip MacMullen, head of environment at industry body Seafish said that he believed the proposed changes were not workable at present.
Would cost millions
MacMullen said one of the problems was that retailers tended to source fish from mixed sources, which would make detail levels demanded on labelling overly complex. Furthermore, different lobby groups would have different criteria for what was sustainable and what is not.
“Having this level of information might appeal to the ethical consumer but the normal consumer would be confused,” he said.
“I would estimate that making these changes would cost the industry millions, at a time when margins are under pressure. In the future as supply chain software evolves this might happen but at the moment I would say the idea is unworkable.”
He added that the industry was firm in its commitment to best practice and would continue to do all it could to ensure information was available to consumers.
A spokeswoman for Youngs Seafood said that the company was examining the MCS proposals in detail, especially the calls for details on species.
Save fish stocks
MCS Aquaculture and Fisheries programme manager, Dr Peter Duncan, said the information was vital to save fish stocks: “We know that in the UK, 90% of fish sales are from just five species – tuna, cod, salmon, prawns and haddock. But such a limited range causes problems not only for these target species, but also for fish caught accidentally that are then thrown away.
We need to change the situation so that maybe 50-70% of sales would come from the top five and alternatives could start appearing – pollack, gurnard, coley, dab, sprats. Such fish have recently been unfashionable or discarded, but they are, in reality, tasty, often cheaper and more sustainable.”
Duncan said consumers may be limited in making the right choices because of poor and confusing labelling: “The use of a traffic light system to indicate the nutritional value of supermarket produce is now well established.
“However, sadly, the labelling of fish and fish products sold in supermarkets has not kept up. It is still virtually impossible to tell precisely where most fish and fish products have been caught.”
