Consumers won’t let Commission off the hook

Fish is something that we should eat more of, but catch less of. On the one hand, health experts recommend that people should increase their consumption of fish, a food credited with reducing the risk of heart attacks and improving children’s behaviour. On the other hand, over-fishing threatens the existence of stocks and the health of the oceans.

Earlier this month, a report from Dalhousie University in Canada projected that if current trends of over-fishing continue, commercial fish stocks could collapse by 2048.

The EU’s common fisheries policy is designed to protect fish stocks. But it has failed lamentably. Quotas have proved to be an inadequate tool and stocks have continued to decline. Yet surveys show that most European citizens are concerned about the state of the oceans. So can changing consumer demand help conserve fish stocks, where high-level policy interventions have failed?

Consumers certainly have good intentions. In a poll of European shoppers, chefs and restaurateurs, commissioned by the Seafood Choices Alliance in 2005, four out of five people (79%) said the environmental impact of seafood was an important factor in their purchasing decisions. Furthermore, two in five people (40%) said they would pay 5%-10% more for seafood identified as eco-friendly. Yet by themselves good intentions are not enough. People need to have the right information and the opportunity to act on it.

European consumers have more information than ever before about the sustainability of stocks. Conservation groups such as WWF have produced guides to good and bad fish: Atlantic cod is out, but mussels, mackerel and salmon from European waters are in. Consumers can also look for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo, a tick of approval morphing into a fish, which certifies whether a product meets environmental standard. The logo is now available on 450 products in 26 countries. Marnie Bammert at the MSC thinks these developments are all helping to raise awareness among consumers and encourage demand for sustainable products. Global sales of MSC-approved products were worth €122.4 million in 2005-6, an increase of 16% from the previous year.

A combination of consumer awareness and green activism is having some effect. In 1997, the conglomerate Unilever was one of those who helped to set up the Marine Stewardship Council. Unilever missed its 2005 target of getting all fish supplies from sustainable stocks, but currently gets more than half of its European fish from MSC-approved fisheries. The MSC has partnerships with retailers and manufacturers in most countries in western Europe. In the UK, the major supermarkets are beginning to compete on selling sustainable fish. A few restaurant chains in the UK and Spain have announced that they will not buy Mediterranean bluefin tuna, a fish which faces extinction and is often caught illegally.

Some of the biggest consumers are national governments. They are responsible (directly or indirectly) for procuring food for schools, hospitals and prisons. Jeanette Longfield at the non-governmental organisation Sustain thinks that national governments must do more to encourage public bodies to buy fish from sustainable stocks.

"This would send a strong signal to the market," she argues.

Campaigners agree that given the scale of the problem, there is a long way to go. The shortage of fish is less visible than other environmental issues, such as recycling. But Caroline Alibert at WWF is optimistic, suggesting that Europe is at the beginning of a consumer movement for sustainable fish and that consumers will demand more from retailers and their governments. In turn, this could add to momentum to reform the common fisheries policy. Consumer awareness is growing, but it does not get the Commission or the EU’s member states off the hook.

Fish is something that we should eat more of, but catch less of. On the one hand, health experts recommend that people should increase their consumption of fish, a food credited with reducing the risk of heart attacks and improving children’s behaviour. On the other hand, over-fishing threatens the existence of stocks and the health of the oceans.