At a parliamentary reception organised by Greenpeace, supermarket bosses and environmental campaigners came together with politicians to discuss the crisis facing our oceans, and although there were differing views about what was required, everyone agreed on one thing: action needs to be taken, and taken quickly.
The event was hosted by Bill Wiggin MP, Shadow Fisheries Minister, who expressed his own concern at the plight of our sea life, particularly in the North Sea. "For me, the key word is sustainability. Not just in terms of fish stocks, but also food supplies and jobs for fishermen. As a country with a huge amount of coastline, it's something we should be getting right but sadly that isn't the case."
| Listen to the speeches and interviews: | Blake Lee-Harwood, Campaigns Director at Greenpeace UK, praised the work done by supermarkets such as Marks and Spencer and Waitrose, describing it as a British success story with companies in other countries sitting up and taking notice of what has been happening here. Also speaking was Mike Barry, Head of Corporate and Social Responsibility at Marks and Spencer. While he was proud to be top of our supermarket seafood league table, |
resting on their collective laurels was not an option. "We're only as good as this year's survey" he said. "We know that other people like Waitrose and Sainsbury's will be snapping at our heels. I want to be top for the foreseeable future, but I'll have to do a lot to stay there."
He described fish as an A-list ingredient for M&S, explaining that they had to know the source of every single fish sold in their shops. "Without traceability, none of these commitments to responsibility or sustainability matter a jot. If you don't know where it's coming from, you don't know how it's produced."
And it was consumers, Barry said, who had convinced M&S to adopt responsible policies on fish and other produce. As a result, the company was involved in the debate about sustainable fishing, much more so than they would have been 10 years ago when, by his own admission, they would have waited for government to take the lead.
There was broad agreement on Barry's remarks from the other attendees but their ideas about how to move forward varied widely. Dr Rob Blyth-Skyrme, Senior Fisheries Advisor at English Nature, was in favour of letting consumer demand drive change in the industry.
"Rather than forcing fishermen to be sustainable from the start, if the markets are demanding it then that's an easier way of making them more sustainable and think about the way they catch fish, the way they store fish, what they do while they're actually fishing. Altogether it seems the right way to go."
