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.
