The UK's DEFRA (Dept of Food and Rural Affairs) has asked for urgent responses to their vision for marine fisheries in England for the next 20 years, and the Consumers' Food Group are coordinating these responses. If you are logged in, you can add comments below (please register if you have not already done so already); if not, comments will be considered for publication by the Author or Administrator.
from Michael Crawford:
Consumers can only make the sustainable choices desired as part of the vision if they have relevant information and there perhaps needs to be an aspiration that consumers be better informed about fish and fish products. Do you agree - or is this also hopelessly idealistic?
Yes, education is essential, but the decision makers also need to be educated.
Please note that the epidemiology regarding the health benefits is not about fish. It is about fish and sea food. There are important differences when it comes to nutritional benefits in particular and sustainability.
Moreover sustainability is not just about better fishing or fish farming it is about restoring the marine food chain and enhancing its productivity.
In opening the Aquaculture conference in Edinburgh last week I made the point that the marine food chain takes off in earnest in the estuaries.
The estuaries in the UK but not just the UK, Europe and most of the world are polluted to the point that this origin is almost now non-existent. It took less than two centuries to kill their immense productivity. The demise of the sea food and fish is not just over fishing it is also the destruction of the food web. Moreover it is not only the estuaries. The surfers in winter of the English and Welsh coast complain of ear infection and turds floating by because of the lax control of industrial and sewage outflows. The Firth of Forth, once renowned for its pubs and bordering restaurants for its sea food is dead. In 1965 a brand new yellow Department of Environment notice was erected "Warning Mussels Unfit for Human Consumption" The crabs, lobsters and scallops were long gone.
The Scottish coast line last week was accused of being one of the most polluted in the EU
This is not dealt with [by DEFRA or the responses so far].
The [Consumers' Food Group] document states: "We are not so sure that the [DEFRA] objective that 'economic returns will be maximised' is appropriate to the vision"
I agree. The vision must include restoration of the marine food web.
The first priority is to energetically restore the estuaries, fresh waters and coast line to cleanliness.
The second and dependent priority is to develop the knowledge to enhance the coastal food web. In part this will happen with clean rivers and estuaries but active intervention will also be needed. The Polynesians had techniques worth exploiting as a means of sustainable fisheries without caged farming systems dependent on feeding.
The third priority is to develop the means to enhance productivity in deep waters.
The oceans occupy 2/3rds of the planet's surface, every square millimetre of which has the potential for photosynthesis and fixing global warming carbon. By contrast only one third of the land mass has a similar potential which is tiny by comparison.
The lessons learnt for the restoration of the king crab at the Smithsonian should be applied more widely.
This all needs to be done in conjunction with more intelligent fishing policy which at the moment is the out of date approach of the hunters and gatherers of 50,000 years ago.
Spending money on visits to Mars is fine but it will not feed us. Money of that size and more needs to be spent on the fresh water and oceans.
from Simon House:
Michael's comments on estuarial life prompt the thought that, as with human beings, the marine food-chain problem is a preconceptional one. A lifecycle view is essential, focusing on the most delicate phase, fertilization and reproduction.
Marine life is preconceptional because all life sprang from it.
Right from the beginning 3 billion years ago the primordial soup possessed the chemicals (call them nutrients if you like) necessary for life to come into being. Then 600 million years ago the efforts of the previous 2.4 billion years laid the preconceptional grounds for the birth of multicellular life at the so -called Cambrian explosion when all 32 phyla we know to day enter the fossil record.
Then 100 million years ago or so, the collapse of the giant ginkos, ferns and their allies, led to the evolution of the gentler flowering plants with protected seeds containing concentrated packets of omega 6 fatty acids (linoleic mainly) needed to develop the vascular invasion and cell adhesion network that embedded the embryo to stick to the uterine wall instead of being laid as a clutch of shelled eggs. That focussed the nutrient supply on one instead of many offspring. It led to the placenta from which event mammal evolution took off.
Moreover, it filled the missing biochemical gap needed for brain evolution namely a balance of between 1 to 1 and 2 to 1 of omega 6 to omega 3 for cerebral expansion which up to that time there is no record
of any significant advancement of brain capacity. Then finally, the return of a primate to the waters edge to get the best of both worlds was the preconceptional stimulus for cerebral enhancement and ultimately H. sapiens.
That of course is backed by the previous return of land mammals to the sea which are now the dolphins and whales with massive brains and migrating huge distances to get their omega 6 fatty acids but at the same time benefiting from the wealth of DHA omega 3 and its allies which is difficult to obtain on land.
from Trevor Bennett:
Michael and Simon - sparking off each other wonderfully. If either/ any of the recipients can get this into a few sentences that DEFRA will understand it would be even better. Meanwhile I will put all on our website and you can point people to the full discussion - a link from foodaware.org.uk would be nice! {}
My simplistic quick response is that the fishing industry is about catching as much of the tasty (or tasteless for fussy kids) fish as possible, rather than as you say, stewarding the life cycles of all marine life, or looking at the unfashionable little flora and fauna from which the marine mammals get their omega 3s.
from David Smith Welsh Food Alliance:
Can I suggest that McCarrison consider a submission to Defra
If you have questions I can arrange for a couple of PQs to be put down just to reinforce this message
I have copied Barbara Saunders into this rich discussion to allow her time to digest and productively use the material provided for Foodaware.
From memory the Assembly will also feed into this UK policy. I will see to this aspect since our new food quality policy, out for consultation shortly, appears to be land based.