Cod off! Birds Eye switches to pollock fish fingers

Posted by jossc - 3 August 2007 at 11:37am - Comments

Trawling for cod

Frozen food giant Birds Eye finally bowed to the inevitable today and announced plans to reduce the amount of cod in its fish fingers in favour of Alaskan pollock. Birds Eye has been sourcing cod from the massively overfished Eastern Baltic Sea for many years, and for the past five years scientists have been saying that cod stocks are so depleted that all fishing must stop to give them a chance to recover. Until now Birds Eye has ignored this advice, even though it's already made a similar commitment to stop using cod from the North Sea, which is also seriously overfished.

Today's announcement is a progressive move which acknowledges the problem and will help to alleviate pressure on cod stocks. We are now pushing the company to give a clear commitment that any cod remaining in its range will not sourced be from threatened Eastern Baltic populations.

By continuing to sell Eastern Baltic cod, Birds Eye was making a mockery of its own environmental policy. In February this year, the company assured us that "Birds Eye is committed to supplying fish products from sustainable resources... that will not harm the marine environment." By moving away from cod, Birds Eye is showing that it now takes the question of sustainability seriously. The move has already caused quite a stir in the fisheries world, and will ramp up pressure on other major suppliers to follow suit.

The news is another positive development for our campaign to encourage major UK suppliers to source their seafood sustainably. Globally, many fish stocks have been decimated by relentless overfishing - the UN officially categorises 71-78 per cent of the world's fisheries as 'fully exploited', 'over exploited' or 'significantly depleted'.

The only long term solution to this crisis, of which cod is just one high-profile example, is to set aside large areas of the oceans where no fishing, drilling or mining is allowed. This is why we''ve campaigned for years for the creation of marine reserves in all the world's oceans.

Since we started the campaign, political acceptance of the need for such reserves has grown steadily, and measures to introduce protected areas in Europe are currently being debated by the EU in its proposed Marine Strategy Directive.

Article tagged as: baltic sea, birds eye, cod, marine reserves, oceans, overfishing, pollack
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Following the end of the 1939 -45 war fishing returned to normality in the North Sea. My own grand parents were fishermen at the time and I know other fishermen who also fished following the end of the war. They report there was no cod to be had then and in much the same ways as you would have people believe. Yet there had been little to no fishing in the North Sea from 1939 to 1945!

In my own home town on the Yorkshire Coast where my own boat fishes there are plenty of cod its simply just not where it used to be. It is true and that from my own experience the oil and gas pipelines were havens for these fish and as such many fishermen simply "dipped and filled" with good quality cod for some years. These times have gone and those times over to a large extent.

However on the coast there is strong evidence that cod are plentiful and stocks growing. I doubt that overfishing is wholly to blame for what many reagrd as the decline of cod fish stocks.

With regard sustainbale fishing. I have fishing boat working on the Yorkshire Coast fishing for what probably amounts for 8 months of the year for crab and lobster, with the remaining time spent long line fishing for cod. I would regard both types of fishery entirely sustainable with the lobster/crab side well managed. Perhaps not so the case with the seasonal winter cod fishery, however with the bulk of the present quota being taken by trawlers, thus using the whole quota before the line season starts late October early November. This therefore eliminates the ability of line fishermen to start fishing sustainably before the end of the quota allocation and as such depriving the industry of a means with which to accomplish sustainable fishing whilst there s cod quota available.

You as an organisation can change the rules and have strong lobbying voice. One way to do this is by setting aside a percentage of cod qutoa for tradiional and sustainable fisheries.
Your readers should also consider the following points:

These being:

• Line fishing is entirely discriminate - unlike trawling or netting.
• Proportionately the amount of fished caught dead is almost nil.
• Proportionately the amount of fish undersize is almost nil and are almost always returned to the sea live and as such participates in a sustainable fisheries regime.
• Proportionately line fishing is almost entirely species selective, very few fish other than cod are caught.
• With line fishing - no lost nets or netting contributing as ghost nets or seabed debris.
• Line fishing provides jobs in terms of infrastructure support from shore i.e. baiters.
• Line fishing is even carbon friendly needing no high power options unlike trawling.
• Fish are always fresh and undamaged at point of sale thus creating a better product for the consumer.

Food for thought I'm sure!

By Gannet - 27 August 2007 at 6:43pm

My first batch of renewable pollock based fish fingers was a disaster. They felt different, refused to go crisp, draped lamely on the bars of my grill, oozed and the coating slid off before drying out all thin and grey, partly on the grill base and partly enmeshed in it. Pollock is a disgusting fish, will kill off the fish finger business and I'd just leave them to swirl around Alaska.

After 40 years eating fish fingers as a staple item, never again. Good old Greenpeace...

By Geordie Kidston - 11 November 2007 at 11:00am

Birdseye took that decision without any prodding from us, Geordie (although to be fair we were monitoring them and would have said something if they hadn't). Pollock may be a poor second best, but cod fisheries around the globe are in such a perilous state that if we don't cut back on consumption and give them a chance to recover they face commercial extinction (where numbers decline to such a point that it's no longer economical to fish them) - and your cod and chips is gone forever. We're asking for a restriction on cod fishing now to give stocks time to recover so that they can be sustainably harvested in future.

By jossc - 12 November 2007 at 3:30pm

I haven't bought fish fingers in many years but I cooked some today and they were horrible ! How can they justify charging £1.95 for 10 of these wafer thin, off-white, with brown streaks and black skin pollock fingers. There is so little fish in them they have added the omega 3 to the breadcrumbs or batter. I'm also left with a nasty aftertaste. Unbelievable, I won't be buying them again, but so many Mums do as their kids love them.

By Ilovefish - 21 November 2009 at 5:52pm

Following the end of the 1939 -45 war fishing returned to normality in the North Sea. My own grand parents were fishermen at the time and I know other fishermen who also fished following the end of the war. They report there was no cod to be had then and in much the same ways as you would have people believe. Yet there had been little to no fishing in the North Sea from 1939 to 1945! In my own home town on the Yorkshire Coast where my own boat fishes there are plenty of cod its simply just not where it used to be. It is true and that from my own experience the oil and gas pipelines were havens for these fish and as such many fishermen simply "dipped and filled" with good quality cod for some years. These times have gone and those times over to a large extent. However on the coast there is strong evidence that cod are plentiful and stocks growing. I doubt that overfishing is wholly to blame for what many reagrd as the decline of cod fish stocks. With regard sustainbale fishing. I have fishing boat working on the Yorkshire Coast fishing for what probably amounts for 8 months of the year for crab and lobster, with the remaining time spent long line fishing for cod. I would regard both types of fishery entirely sustainable with the lobster/crab side well managed. Perhaps not so the case with the seasonal winter cod fishery, however with the bulk of the present quota being taken by trawlers, thus using the whole quota before the line season starts late October early November. This therefore eliminates the ability of line fishermen to start fishing sustainably before the end of the quota allocation and as such depriving the industry of a means with which to accomplish sustainable fishing whilst there s cod quota available. You as an organisation can change the rules and have strong lobbying voice. One way to do this is by setting aside a percentage of cod qutoa for tradiional and sustainable fisheries. Your readers should also consider the following points: These being: • Line fishing is entirely discriminate - unlike trawling or netting. • Proportionately the amount of fished caught dead is almost nil. • Proportionately the amount of fish undersize is almost nil and are almost always returned to the sea live and as such participates in a sustainable fisheries regime. • Proportionately line fishing is almost entirely species selective, very few fish other than cod are caught. • With line fishing - no lost nets or netting contributing as ghost nets or seabed debris. • Line fishing provides jobs in terms of infrastructure support from shore i.e. baiters. • Line fishing is even carbon friendly needing no high power options unlike trawling. • Fish are always fresh and undamaged at point of sale thus creating a better product for the consumer. Food for thought I'm sure!

By Gannet - 27 August 2007 at 6:43pm

My first batch of renewable pollock based fish fingers was a disaster. They felt different, refused to go crisp, draped lamely on the bars of my grill, oozed and the coating slid off before drying out all thin and grey, partly on the grill base and partly enmeshed in it. Pollock is a disgusting fish, will kill off the fish finger business and I'd just leave them to swirl around Alaska. After 40 years eating fish fingers as a staple item, never again. Good old Greenpeace...

By Geordie Kidston - 11 November 2007 at 11:00am

Birdseye took that decision without any prodding from us, Geordie (although to be fair we were monitoring them and would have said something if they hadn't). Pollock may be a poor second best, but cod fisheries around the globe are in such a perilous state that if we don't cut back on consumption and give them a chance to recover they face commercial extinction (where numbers decline to such a point that it's no longer economical to fish them) - and your cod and chips is gone forever. We're asking for a restriction on cod fishing now to give stocks time to recover so that they can be sustainably harvested in future.

By jossc - 12 November 2007 at 3:30pm

I haven't bought fish fingers in many years but I cooked some today and they were horrible ! How can they justify charging £1.95 for 10 of these wafer thin, off-white, with brown streaks and black skin pollock fingers. There is so little fish in them they have added the omega 3 to the breadcrumbs or batter. I'm also left with a nasty aftertaste. Unbelievable, I won't be buying them again, but so many Mums do as their kids love them.

By Ilovefish - 21 November 2009 at 5:52pm

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