Caviar to become past luxury

15 December 2005
Caviar to become past luxury

Caviar is set to become a luxury of the past due to the thriving trade in illegal sales, charity WWF warned today.

Some 12,000kg of illegal caviar was seized by European authorities between 2000 and 2005, and WWF fears the true figure is likely to be much higher, putting many sturgeon species on the edge of extinction.

A spokeswoman for WWF's wildlife trade monitoring programme TRAFFIC said: "We fear that quantities of illegal caviar are much higher due to the covert nature of the trade."

Germany is the biggest consumer of the delicacy, landing 2,224kg over the five years, compared with the UK's 1,587kg.

WWF said the delayed introduction of a European labelling system, which is set to be introduced at the start of 2006, had hurt efforts to tackle illegal trading.

In September 2004 the United Nations temporarily froze caviar exports to protect fish stocks, pushing wholesale prices up.

Get your copy of Caterer and Hotelkeeper every week - click here to subscribe and save 25%.

Sudoku Join the craze and play Sudoku online!
The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking