Victoria's Green Matters - 3rd Feb 2011

Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

How about a fish supper tonight? Or do you regularly eat fish on Fridays? Fish has been extolled as the food for ‘healthy eating’ by many. Unfortunately, there is a ‘but’. Do you ever give thought to how your fish is caught or where it comes from? It does not originate from frozen blocks in a freezer cabinet at the local supermarket.

Fishing is a dangerous business and many men have lost their lives braving cold and mountainous seas to bring their catch ashore. Fishing has become an industry; huge factory ships, particularly from Russia, spend weeks plundering the fish supplies in the seas around our islands. Over-fishing by all nationalities has led to some species of fish becoming seriously depleted and, in some seas, extinct.

In an attempt to control the amount of fish that is taken from the sea, the European Union (EU) created the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). While obviously well meaning this has led to fishermen being allocated ‘quotas’ or regularised amounts of certain fish types that can be caught. Fishing over these quotas will result in fines for the fishermen. Unfortunately, it is impossible to fish for only one type without catching many others, allowed or not. Fishermen have to discard or throw away fish that are caught ‘over quota’ and most of these fish die.

How wasteful is this? The CFP is being reformed before implementation in 2012 and TV personality Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has launched a campaign to stop the wasteful discard system and replace it with something more sustainable. To preserve the limited stocks of some fish, we must develop the taste for other types that are plentiful and ask our fish shops to supply them.

Join the campaign – visit www.hugh’sfishfight.net – sign up and tell all your friends to sign up too!