Supply chain: Net profits

With orders relayed via manic arm gestures from traders with £20 notes clutched tightly in wads, Billingsgate is still every bit the action-packed market.

But talk to any merchant and you hear the same thing: it is not the same focal point it once was. Up and down Britain it is a similar story. Fish auctions in coastal towns are on the wane and many have ceased to exist altogether.

At the same time, the Sea Fish Industry Authority (SFIA) reveals that UK consumers bought 280,000 tonnes of seafood in 2003, an increase of 2% on 2002. Figures also show that fish is the top choice for consumers when they dine out - ahead of poultry or beef - with sales worth about £2.6b per year.

So why are the traditional supply chains changing? First of all, large nationwide wholesalers have circumnavigated those

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markets, consolidating their supply chains and delivering direct to the client. But more important is the fact that more fish is being imported than ever, up 31% by volume between 1991 and 2002. This fish arrives at different ports and airports. At the same time, fish landed by UK vessels into the UK decreased by 36% between 1995 and 2002, largely because of cuts in quotas. The history of those cuts is well documented. Political debate and media coverage has put the issue of overfishing and dwindling stocks firmly in the public mind. But despite the bad press surrounding species under pressure, the British are still very narrow-minded when it comes to fish. According to the SFIA, cod, haddock and salmon still accounted for more than half (58%) of fish served by food service outlets in 2003. Because of overfishing, that cod now has to be sourced from elsewhere to meet demand. How can you make sure that sourcing fish from overseas is not going to have a similar impact on stocks? For David Cavalier, food innovations director at contract caterer Charlton House, the answer was to take cod off its menus altogether. "The food service industry serves a phenomenal number of meals, and by doing this we can really make an impact," he says. Cavalier estimates Charlton House might have once served up to 12,000 portions of cod each week. Although not one of Cavalier's clients objected, suppliers were less happy because, he believes, of the premium price cod fetches. "I just told them if they wanted our business they needed to make sure other stocks were available," he says. That led to increased communications between suppliers and chefs. "Contract chefs don't have the same relationship with suppliers as restaurant chefs have," he says. "But now the guys have to get on the phone and ask what's in." Cavalier says there are plenty of good alternatives. "I'm a great believer in pollack, which is a good cod substitute and has a fantastic flavour." For now, the ban is indefinite, but Cavalier stresses he would use farmed cod or buy from alternative fishing grounds in the future. "I'm not out to ban cod in the UK completely, but we owe it to the industry to be as ethically sound as possible." What must be stressed that not all stocks of cod are under threat. Ninety per cent of cod eaten in the UK comes from stocks in Iceland and the Barents Sea, where good management means quotas are actually increasing. Haddock from the Faroe Islands is at unsustainable levels, while in the North Sea stocks are healthy. But unless chefs are armed with this knowledge as well as an understanding of which fishing techniques are harmful and when fish are breeding, it becomes nearly impossible to make an informed decision. Add to this the possibilities of unscrupulous suppliers promising you fish from the South-west when it's really from the North Sea - and ethical purchasing becomes a minefield. One solution comes from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which believes that banning fish is not a viable long-term solution. Set up in 1997, the MSC introduced a globally recognised accreditation system for fisheries. Each must satisfy criteria relating to the sustainability of stocks, the ecological impact of its fishing and stock management in the future. This system allows traceability for the consumer - what the MSC calls the "chain of custody" - guaranteed by an easily understood logo. There are currently 11 fisheries accredited around the world, three in the UK. These provide 4% of the world's edible fish, but within two or three years, according to MSC commercial manager Amy Williams, there will be enough variety to allow even the most fish-obsessed chef to ensure their whole menu is certified. "At the moment we have 11 different fish, and soon there will be a certified Dover sole fishery and even a crab fishery," she says. Swedish chef Christian Sandefeldt is already seeking accreditation from the MSC for his new London restaurant, Deep, which opened last week. The organisation is also this month launching the Fish ‘n' Kids programme. This Government-funded initiative will see MSC-labelled food appear in an as-yet-unnamed major family restaurant chain. There will also be a pilot scheme for the same fish to be served in a school. That project will include a partnership with food service suppliers, including Brakes. In fact, unusually when it comes to sustainable food procurement, it is some of the big players in the global food industry that are making changes. "There is more and more pressure on companies for corporate social responsibility," says MSC chief executive Rupert Howes. Sainsbury's, for example, has a target that 40% of all wild fish it sells under its own brand will be from MSC-certified fisheries by 2006. Unilever already sources 70% of its fish sustainably. As Charles Glover reports in The End of the Line, McDonald's now uses pollack from the certified Alaska fishery for all its Filet-O-Fish sandwiches in North America. In Switzerland the company also uses certified pollack. The UK Government's own report published last year, Net Benefits, included the target that by 2015 all fish sold in the UK should come from fisheries accredited by the MSC (or equivalent). Young's, among the UK's largest processors of fish for both the retail and food service sector, was one of the first to use MSC-accredited hoki. "Our NPD focuses on developing new products using familiar species as well as introducing new options and ideas to allow people to enjoy fish such as hoki, hake and pollack," says Peter Milsted, director of Young's Foodservice. "We can influence the fishing industry, and we do." The other reason for not banning species outright is that when the stocks recover, the supply chain must be in place to deal with it. No one wants to see our own industry collapse, as happened in Canada when cod was banned. But to keep our fleet afloat, in particular the smaller local day boats, restaurants and chefs have a responsibility to create a more varied demand, which will take pressure off other stocks. The problem for the boats is that they can't predict exactly what they'll catch. Most day boats haul in a mixed catch. Some of what they catch - gurnard, megrim, coley and pollack - isn't valuable, so they have to go out to catch more of what is. But as they get close to their quotas, the risk of having to throw fish overboard, dead, is increased. According to the MSC, 25% of all fish caught globally is wasted in this way. However, if there was more of a market for those lesser-known varieties, then the price would go up and they would be able to make the money they need to live. Take the example of Dover soles and megrim soles. According to Nigel Ward at Channel Fisheries - a confessed Dover sole lover - these two fish, when cooked well, are hard to tell apart. The problem is that if he was selling Dover soles at, say, £12 a kilogram to chefs, the megrim would sell for only about £5 for the same weight. That should be great news for the chef, but neither chefs nor the fish-buying public seemed to have cottoned on to this bargain. It is not, however, good news for the Dover sole, because its premium price means fishermen will chase it for their profits. At this time of year they will chase the Dovers to the Thames estuary, where they come in numbers to spawn. Roger Barton, of Billingsgate business Barton and Hart, shows me a Dover with an obvious swelling down one side - where the spawn is carried. In fact, most of the Dovers in the crates at Billingsgate have that swelling. It's rather grim. "We should ban fishing in the Thames estuary at this time of year," says Barton. "It would give all of these little fishes a chance and would give us plenty more fish in the future." Meanwhile, megrim is in no danger of running out. "In the Western Approach, west from the Scilly Isles and as you come up to the Bristol Channel, there is tonnes of the stuff - more than we could possibly ever eat," says Ward. In fact, most of the catch, from that fishery and from Scotland, goes to Spain (about 95%, guesses Ward), where there is a market, particularly at Christmas when it reaches the same price as Dovers. If more people demanded megrim, then chefs would buy it. Demand would push up price and allow fishermen to take pressure off Dover stocks. "If the price makes it worth catching, they will be catching it," says Ward. "Twenty-five years ago no one would touch brill. Now it is a best seller because it is a fantastic alternative to turbot." The one caveat is that although local boats may be less destructive than trawlers, they often fish in areas already depleted. However, with more fisheries soon to be credited in the UK, the MSC hopes that people will be able to buy more native fish with peace of mind. "People can then make an informed decision whether to buy British fish or from further afield, but both sources will be guaranteed as sustainable by us," says Williams. Williams believes that restaurants and catering chefs have a vital role to play, experimenting with different species and leading the way on improving the supply chain. "Food service has a greater opportunity to educate people," she says. "If consumers are learning about sustainable fish out of home, then they will take that experience back home." Let new species take the strain *By Rick Stein, proprietor of the Seafood Restaurant, Padstow, author and broadcaster* A depressing report published two weeks ago stated that the human race is living beyond its means. It warned that almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on earth is being degraded by human pressure. Overfishing features heavily in that report - the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, produced in Washington. It says three-quarters of all fish stocks are over-harvested and, in some areas, the catch is less than one-hundredth of what it was before industrial fishing began. This would certainly relate to parts of the North Sea as well as the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. The report continues, remorselessly, to say that 90% of the total weight of the ocean's largest predators - tuna, swordfish and sharks - has disappeared in recent years. Shrouded in such gloom, it is hard to see what a fish-lover can do. Give up fish altogether? That would be little short of disastrous. At the same time as we are all becoming aware of the crisis of overfishing, we are also realising, with horror, that many of us are eating dangerously unhealthy food. One of the vital constituents of a balanced diet is fish. This is due to the polyunsaturated fatty acids found in fish, known as omega 3. These are vital for the efficient functioning of the human brain. Charles Clover, environment editor of the Daily Telegraph, is also the author of a disturbing book called The End of the Line. The book is filled with similar ominous information about overfishing, but there are some elements of hope. He says that we as consumers have to change if the situation is to improve. The way forward, we both feel, is for us all to eat more non-threatened species. A couple of months ago we met in London to try pollack, megrim sole, gurnard, sand eels, sprats and blue whiting. All these have been given a clean bill of health by the Marine Conservation Society in its Good Fish Guide. Many are fish I already serve at my restaurants in Padstow - all in fact, except blue whiting, which is currently caught in millions of tonnes to be turned into fish pellets for fish farms. I deep-fried the sand eels in the same way as whitebait, grilled the pollack and served it with a soy butter, tomato and coriander sauce, made goujons of the megrim sole and served the gurnard in tempura batter with Thai chilli sauce and mint and coriander. I grilled the sprats and pan-fried the blue whiting fillets with a hot Goan masala paste. All the fish were good. The blue whiting was particularly interesting, considerably more so than ordinary whiting - but you simply can't buy it. We were left wondering about the wasteful process of feeding it to other fish. Actually, it's almost impossible to buy most of the fish we tried, unless you live by the sea. Try getting gurnard, pollack or megrim sole from most suppliers. But these are the fish we should be putting on our menus to take the strain off fish like cod, haddock, plaice, monkfish and tuna. Case study: M&J Seafood Mike Berthet is purchasing director of M&J Seafood, the UK's largest wholesale fish business. Here he shares his thoughts on the company's role in the supply chain. Tastes have changed over the past 20 years, since I first started buying fish. Menus are much more sophisticated than they were, and people now want excitement on their plate. That translates directly into the demand that we see as a seafood supplier, and it's a rising market too. As people tune into its health benefits, seafood consumption is on the up. Our ageing population is also having a knock-on effect, as older people eat more fish. Part of my job involves travelling all over the world looking for new species. It's important that these fit the UK palate, though, as not everything suits. Warm cod sperm is popular in Tokyo, but it wouldn't go down well here. Our latest find is corvina, which comes from Ecuador. It's a white fish with a flavour similar to sea bass. It's important for big companies like us to research availability. When I visit anywhere the first thing I check is how plentiful stocks are. In each country we work with the relevant fish authorities to research new species. Certainly there are species that shouldn't be sold, because sustainability is an issue. There's no way I would recommend a species to a customer if stocks are limited. I have a conscience, and I want my kids to be able to eat this fish in the future. In the early 1990s stocks were so depleted that the Canadian fisheries minister shut down the country's whole cod fishing industry. It has never fully returned. Whole villages and towns closed down. I can't see this happening in the UK, but we should all be considering sustainability. I sit on the Whitefish Advisory Committee, so I see what's going on - for example, what the UK is trying to achieve in the North Sea. Enormous efforts are being made, such as increasing mesh sizes in nets, and spawn areas being closed off. But people aren't aware that only 3% of cod comes from the North Sea. The rest is imported from countries such as Iceland, Russia and the Baltic nations. There's a huge amount of good work being carried out. Substantial volumes of juveniles (baby lobster) are being put back in the sea, and we shouldn't forget that there are still new fisheries around the UK. We're just starting to work with a wild sardine fishery in Cornwall, for example, that has never previously been fished. It's also worth pointing out that 40% of UK seafood consumption is aquacultured. People forget that aquaculture plays a big role in producing what we eat. The moment you mention farmed, everyone immediately thinks of salmon. But there are 20 or 30 aquacultured species available. Farmed cod is set to become much more important in the future, and one of our newest products is farmed barramundi from Malaysia. It's a fantastic fish and, being farmed, it's sustainable. A s the largest independent seafood supplier in the UK, we do come in for criticism because of our size, but I don't think this is relevant. The company has 14 branches which buy locally from fishermen all around the country, and we supply local customers. One of the privileges that we do have as a big supplier, though, is that we can influence the market. If there's a new species, we can push ahead and get it on the menu. It's our job to get more young people interested in seafood and to enable chefs to feel more confident in putting fish on the menu. We pioneer change. If we don't do it, who will? M&J Seafood 01296 588221 [www.mjseafoods.com (Additional reporting by Emma Allen and Joanna Wood) *Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 14 April 2005*