NZ fishing industry does us a disservice
Our fishing industry is doing us a disservice. As a small nation that relies on our primary industries and exports, we want to see New Zealand products flying off the shelves because they reflect genuinely sustainable practices that match our clean green reputation. Instead, we are seeing more and more New Zealand products being taken off shelves because they are failing to meet the sustainability demands of consumers and retailers in our export markets.
Recent announcements include that by Compass Group USA, the leading food service company in North America, of their sustainable seafood purchasing initiative. Over three years, Compass Group has taken 1.5 million pounds of unsustainable seafood off their catalogues – including orange roughy. This is a clear signal to the New Zealand fishing industry, which continues to catch and export orange roughy even though three of the eight stocks have collapsed and the Australian Government has declared it a threatened species.
This week Wegmans, a major US supermarket chain, has also taken orange roughy off their shelves. If our fishing industry had not yet got the message, Wegman’s statement should leave no room for doubt about the need to pick up our game:
We will no longer be carrying the Orange Roughy species of seafood, due to concerns about its sustainability. This is part of our “always looking at what we’re doing and trying to be better” philosophy. We’re proud of our seafood program and take steps to offer product from sustainable sources to protect seafood for future generations.
For these reasons, we are adding Orange Roughy to our list of seafood not offered due to fishery management concerns.
Here are the specifics. Orange Roughy is a slow-growing, deep-water fish and our seafood specialists do not believe current fishing guidelines allow the population to replenish. In addition, bottom trawling, the only fishing method used for this species, damages the ocean floor. Since Orange Roughy is always in season, the damage never stops and the ocean floor never begins to recover. The catch method also results in large amounts of other species being caught. That “bycatch” is not useable, wasting valuable plant and animal life.
The writing is on the wall. Our industry can no longer rely on a mere public relations exercise to sell our products overseas. Unless those products are backed up by true sustainability, retailers and customers will simply not accept them.
But this is not just about export doors slamming closed on New Zealand products – this is about identifying and seizing an opportunity. At the same time as Compass Group announced their policy, they also announced they were selling 5.5 million pounds more sustainable seafood. Across the Atlantic in Europe, seafood wholesalers are signing up to a Greenpeace pre-order petition for sustainably caught pole and line skipjack tuna, an initiative catching the attention of Seafood Industry media such as Intrafish. In the UK, two of the leading supermarket chains have already announced a switch to pole and line skipjack tuna, and more retailers are heading in the same sustainable direction.
Here is our opportunity. If we put our fisheries on a truly sustainable footing, instead of cutting corners, our seafood will sell itself in the increasingly sustainability-aware international market. But it’s not just about the fish, and it’s not just about exports. We all win from sustainable fisheries, because it means more fish in the water for us all to enjoy, secure jobs for the future and an industry we can be proud of.
As extreme fisherman Matt Watson put it in a recent video: “as we continue with our bad habits, jobs are being lost, the environment is being ruined and our international reputation could well go down the gurgler. We can’t risk that.”
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