Front & sidereLAKSation 306. Callander McDowell
Prophets first!: According to the Guardian newspaper, Birds Eye are to launch the first sustainable fish finger made entirely from Marine Stewardship Council certified Alaskan Pollock fillets. Martin Glenn, Chief Executive of Birds Eye Iglo said that this is the most significant fish marketing initiative since the launch of the first fingers, whilst Rupert Howes, Chief Executive of the MSC said that it is a bold move by Birds Eye. We, at Callander McDowell would disagree. This is not bold nor is it anything new. In fact we are surprised that it has taken Birds Eye until now to reach this decision.
Two different stocks of Alaskan Pollock were certified by the MSC in 2005, the same year that Unilver, then owners of Birds Eye and Iglo announced that all Iglo brand fish fingers sold in Germany would be made with MSC Alaskan Pollack. Whilst, it might have been difficult to persuade all British consumers to move away from cod fish fingers, BirdsEye could have made an attempt to use MSC Alaskan Pollock back then. After all, Birds Eye were committed to the introduction of sustainable fish, long before then, since, owners Unilever were one of the two founders of the Marine Stewardship Council a decade previously. It is not as if Birds Eye are even going to follow their German colleagues example and completely substitute all the fish with sustainable alternatives, as only 18% of fish finger sales will be manufactured from MSC sourced fish.
What makes this announcement even more difficult to comprehend is that British consumers can already buy fish fingers made from Alaskan Pollock. These are sold under the Birds Eye label yet packs make no mention of sustainable issues or the MSC, instead highlighting the omega 3 content.
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Are these fish fingers made from fish that have not been certified by the MSC? Intrafish report that Premium Alaskan Pollock, as Birds Eye now calls the MSC certified fish, will make up 29% of the company’s fish raw material (therefore not for exclusive use in fish fingers). In addition, the company will continue to buy non-MSC whitefish including pollock and haddock accounting for 21% and 6% of their raw material purchases. It is unclear whether this pollock is from Alaska or whether it is from a different source but it does seem that this non-MSC pollock is not the fish used in the current fish finger range. We make this assumption based on the fact that as these Alaskan Pollock fish fingers are manufactured in Germany alongside those made for the Iglo brand.
Martin Glenn said that this move is a calculated risk although consumer research has shown that 80% of consumers are not bothered about which species is used in their fish fingers, although the corporate view was that only cod fish fingers would work in the UK. He said that ‘we have taught British consumers that the only good fish finger is made from cod’. The image of Captain Birds Eye on TV extolling the goodness of prime cod fish fingers is still strong in the advertising memories.
Tom Pickerell, fisheries policy officer for the WWF told the Guardian that ‘This is a brilliant move and we can only say well done to Birds Eye’ a not unsurprising comment from the other founder member of the MSC. He added that it has taken years for people to realize that fish stocks are renewable if they are managed properly. Yet, Martin Glenn appeared to contradict this view by suggesting that this new sustainable status will not influence British consumers nor has it influenced German consumers either. Sales of fish fingers in Germany have grown but the fact that they were sustainable was not a key driver.
So what has prompted this decision? Of course it could be all down to price. According to the Daily Mail, Martin Glenn admits the reduced availability of wild caught cod means that prices are rising whilst Alaskan Pollock offers a much cheaper option. Not unexpectedly, consumers will not find the new range to be any cheaper! This is perhaps why Rupert Howes of the MSC had to qualify his remarks that this announcement from Birds Eye is good news for consumers – who want to make the best environmental choice. Currently a pack of ten cod fish fingers is priced at £1.64 (16.4p/finger) whilst new packs of 12 pollock fish fingers will be priced at £1.99 (16.5p/finger). The battered version comes in packs of 8 and is already available at a cost of £1.59 equating to 19.8p/finger although packs do not display the MSC symbol. The pack of 6 mega sized fish pollock fingers pictured on our site costs £1.47 (24.5p/finger) but these are much larger fingers (55g compared with 30g for the battered fingers) Clearly, if Birds Eye can persuade consumers to buy Alaskan Polock fish fingers instead of those made from cod, they are set to benefit financially from this latest initiative. They can both appear to be ethical and rake in the money!
As well as the reference to how great this is for the consumer, Rupert Howes also said that it is good news for the environment although we are having some difficulty in seeing why. Transporting Alaskan Pollock half way round the world does nothing to help reduce food miles or the carbon footprint it generates during shipping. (As a side issue Julian Pryke writing in Seafood International reports Vanity Fair found that the carbon footprint of a 15g piece of bluefin tuna sold in the US amounted to 224g or 15 times its own weight in carbon dioxide. Of course we are not suggesting that shipping frozen Pollock by sea would generate such a high figure). This is bound to have a negative effect on the environment. Mr Howes also said that it is also great news for the Alaskan Pollock fishery although we suspect not for the Pollock themselves.
In a letter to the Guardian, Kelly Slade of ‘Animal Aid’ wrote: “Birds Eye's launch of "sustainable" fish fingers is at best a short-term solution to the depletion of the marine populations. Already, 75% of the world's fisheries have been identified as fully exploited, overexploited or significantly depleted. Are we to decimate species after species - first cod, now pollock - bringing each in turn to the brink of extinction, or are we ready to admit that eating fish is simply not sustainable?”
Ms Slade ends by suggesting that there is a simple answer: stop eating fish. We, at Callander McDowell offer a different view. The only truly sustainable option is to source fish from farming. Aquaculture is the most effective management tool to reduce the fishing pressure on exploited and over exploited stocks. For every fish that can be supplied by farming, one less fish needs to be harvested from the sea. Sadly by allying themselves to the WWF through the MSC, Birds Eye has effectively closed the door on sourcing farmed fish. They have promoted their use of wild fish in advertising campaigns as a benefit yet, in exactly the same way that their promotion of cod has influenced British consumers to demand cod, so their use of wild stocks could actually help speed up the depletion of threatened species.
Cod farming is still in its infancy and it is unlikely that Birds Eye, or anyone else would be prepared to pay the higher cost for farmed cod to use in fish fingers. However in years to come, increased farming will undoubtedly bring down the cost of cod. Currently Birds Eye expects their decision to turn to Alaskan Pollock will reduce their usage of cod by 4,000 tonnes, hardly a significant volume.
If Birds Eye are really interested in protecting wild stocks then they should consider encouraging aquaculture rather than undermining its potential. Of course, the delayed decision to move to MSC certified fish does bring into question the true motivation behind this latest promotion.
Jamie’s back: Jamie Oliver has returned to British TV this week with a new series ‘Jamie at Home’ where he demonstrates recipes using ingredients he has grown himself. This is a long way from Jamie’s school dinners which brought him to the attention of a much wider audience some three years ago. The school dinners series exposed the poor quality of the meals many of which were made from ingredients costing as little as 56p. The series raised national awareness of some of the unhealthy foods being served to schoolkids and began a revolution in the way school meals were cooked and served. The programmes made Jamie into a national hero.
The Daily Mail has now highlighted that the school dinner service in secondary schools (age 11 upwards) is now under threat as pupils vote with their feet rejecting the healthier offerings. Instead of buying meals from the new lunch menus, youngsters are relying on cheap takeaway and snack food to get them through the day. As a result, the schools dinner service has seen a 30% drop in takings and is now making a loss which is not sustainable.
Sandra Russell of the School Meals Association said that we cannot expect to reverse an embedded culture overnight nor can we convert teenagers to a healthier regime by force. The real problem is that older children are allowed to leave the school premises during lunch time and therefore they are able to choose not to eat the healthy options; a choice not available to younger children. The problem is that the school dinners service may have collapsed by the time the younger children reach secondary school.
At the time, much was made of the attempt to include healthy fish choices on the school menu and these do not seem to appeal to these children. This appears to be in line with observations of the retail sector in which it is older consumers who account for the bulk of fresh fish sales. Younger consumers do not seem to be interested in fresh fish. The danger is that as older consumers age and pass on, there is a risk that fish consumption may fall. The challenge is to find ways to make fish more appealing to the younger consumer and we believe that that this will only happen if the industry starts to put fish into the type of meals that younger consumers eat rather than try to persuade them to eat what we think they should be eating. This will not be an easy challenge as Jamie Oliver has now discovered.