reLAKSation 337. Callander McDowell
Tenuous link!: The BBC Food website suggests that whilst Norwegians may eat lots of eggs at Easter time, they may also serve other festival dishes such as lutefisk. This is the famous dish made from air dried cod soaked in lye. This tenuous link between Easter and cod is good enough reason for us to revisit the fish for this Easter issue of reLAKSation.
The Daily Express reported this week that cod sales have fallen in the UK as a consequence of the fight to save it. They say that shoppers are turning away from cod because of fears that North Sea stocks are running low. Instead, sales of pollock have soared. The Express says that pollock has become so popular with Britons that spending on it has increased by 340 per cent per year. By comparison, 1.3 per cent less has been spent on cod equating to a 5.3 per cent drop in volume.
According to SeaFish, who supplied the data, people have taken the environmental warnings to heart and are refraining from eating cod as numbers are diminishing from over-fishing. We, at Callander McDowell are not convinced, especially since the percentage growth figures provided do not really reflect sales.
Sales of cod, in any form, have fallen from 57,233 tonnes last year to 54,172 tonnes this year. By comparison, sales of pollock have increased from 872 tonnes to 3,891 tonnes. The drop in cod sales is matched almost exactly by sales of pollock! In recent months, fresh, locally caught, pollock has started to appear on fresh fish counters but it is likely that most of the pollock recorded in this data is Alaskan pollock. This is increasingly being used as an alternative to cod and haddock in breaded and battered frozen products due to its sustainable credentials. However, we believe that it is the processors who are driving this change rather than any change of heart by shoppers.
Companies such as Young’s have pushed sustainable sourcing to the top of their agendas and this is reflected in the range of products they supply to retailers. The fact that shoppers are now buying these new products may not be an indication of any wish to buy sustainable products but rather that they cost less. For example shoppers at Asda can buy Young’s chunky battered pollock or Young’s chunky battered cod. The pollock is priced at £5.56/kg whilst the cod is £6.72/kg however it is the pack price that provides a real incentive for shoppers to move from cod to pollock. The cod is packed in a 540g box priced at £3.63 whist the pollock is priced at just £2.50 although it comes in a smaller box size of 450g. It is such pricing, not the environmental issue, which we believe drives the change from cod to pollock in this market sector but this move away from cod is still relatively small when compared against total cod sales.
The problem is that consumers are getting very mixed messages. Whilst the environmental groups have issued gloom and doom scenarios about the future of cod, the reality does not appear so bleak. We have discussed in a previous reLAKSation that although cod is supposed to be in short supply, the price in many supermarkets suggests that it is still abundant. The price of cod fillet has remained consistently low regardless of availability. It almost seems that cod is being used as a loss leader to attract customers in store. This week, Morrison’s are advertising cod on TV for just £6.65/kg.
At the same time, scientists at the Scottish Executive’s Fisheries Research Services have announced that stocks of North Sea cod could soon return to sustainable levels. According to the Scotsman, an international committee of marine scientists warned back in 2002 that the cod fishery must close for up to 12 years if it were to have any chance of recovery. This doomsday forecast now appears to have been premature as the latest report offers a much more optimistic outlook although the fishery is still far from sustainable.
Meanwhile stocks in Iceland appear to be abundant. Icelandic sources told fishupdate.com that fishermen are reporting that they are having problems keeping to their quotas as it is proving difficult to avoiding catching cod. The Icelandic Fisheries Minister, Einar K. Gudfinnsson told the recent North Atlantic Seafood Forum that environmental groups have spread too much misleading information and what they tell consumers is often far from the truth. According to FIS.com, he said that the WWF argue that the cod is facing extinction but he said they fail to appreciate that there is more than one cod fishery in the world and some stocks are actually quite healthy, especially those in Icelandic waters..
It is such fish which are sourced by supermarkets like Marks & Spencer’s whose policy of stocking on sustainable line caught fish has meant that they have bucked the UK trend with sales of cod rising by 15 percent. However, whether this rise is due to environmental concerns or something else is unclear. M&S have adopted a sustainable approach by reducing the range of species stocked to just a handful. This means that consumers have much less choice than in other supermarkets and so as the range has diminished sales of cod have risen.
It doesn’t help consumers that the sustainable message is still extremely confused. The ‘blue tick’ showing fish are Marine Stewardship Council certified are supposed to be the only way to guarantee that the fish have been sustainably caught. Marks and Spencer’s say on their website that ‘We are committed to ensuring all our fresh and processed fish is MSC certified or equivalent’ but it is unclear what this ‘equivalent’ is supposed to be. M&S say their Icelandic line caught fish is sustainable yet there is a cod fishery which is MSC certified. Is the Icelandic fish more sustainable than that certified by the MSC?
The Michelen starred sustainable fish chef Tom Aitkens appears to be also confused. Although he argues for locally caught fresh fish, his new fish and chip shop serves MSC certified cod caught in Alaskan waters. Fishupdate.com reports that this week Mr Aitkens awarded fishermen Steve and Chris Wightman membership of the ‘Responsible Fishing Scheme’. They took Mr Aitkens out in their boat on the North Sea to show him how they minimise the impact of their fishing on the environment. They fish seasonally; line catching cod, seabass and thornback ray during the winter and drift netting for sole, plaice and lobster in the summer. Steve told Tom Aitkens that they had been using sustainable fishing methods for years and were thrilled to have been recognised for their efforts. Yet, it seems that whilst Tom Aitkens is happy to present an award, he prefers to use cod that has been shipped halfway round the world in his restaurant even though there are fishermen like Chris and Steve Wrightman who are fishing for cod in the most sustainable way possible. Fishermen like Chris and Steve are unlikely to ever be certified as sustainable by the MSC since they operate just one small boat catching a variety of different species. How are consumers supposed to know whether their fish is sustainable or not?
The big question about cod is if wild stocks are recovering, where does this leave farmed cod? One person who is in no doubt is food writer and critic Joanna Blythman. In an article in the Sunday Herald entitled ‘Cod is dead…now let’s get rid of fish farm blight’ Ms Blythman argues that the fact that ‘No Catch’ cod has gone belly up should crystallise the debate about farmed versus wild fish. She says ‘No Catch’s’ demise should have established the principle that farmed fish at £20/kg is not the white night riding in on a charger to save depleted fish stocks.
Instead, she says that fish farming is riven with structural problems and that our 30 year love affair with fish farming has proven to be the biggest ecological disaster to hit the west coast of Scotland in living memory!! However, she says that the worst thing about fish farming is that allows us to take the eye off the ball of wild fish stocks as it gives us an excuse to write off the seas and oceans as a source of future sustenance.
She endorses Greenpeace’s view that the decline in wild fish stocks can be halted and even reversed by the creation of marine reserves claiming evidence from New Zealand as persuasive proof. Yet, North Sea cod stocks appear to be recovering without the imposition of a marine reserve and meanwhile in New Zealand, sustainably certified hoki stocks are now in decline as are stocks of Alaskan pollock from Alaska.
There are clear parallels between the WWF warning of Armageddon for cod stocks and Joanna Blythman’s tirades against aquaculture. Both are built on preconceived ideas about their respective industries. Ms Blythman is set against farmed fish but she has no problem stuffing her face with terrestrially farmed produce for her weekly restaurant review. Farming is farming.
Ms Blythman’s apparent glee about the demise of ‘No Catch’ will not be a deterrent to the further development of the aquaculture industry. Despite her claims otherwise, fish farming is the only way to ensure that the world’s demands for fish and seafood are met. Sadly, there will be hiccups along the way as the industry learns to adapt to changing market needs. Whilst ‘No Catch’ had its flaws, the concept that we should be farming fish is exactly right.
‘No Catch’ was in the news again this week. The former executives told IntraFish that this was not about the failure of one of the world’s most high profile aquaculture companies but rather about a foreign financier’s decision to pull the plug with scant warning on a business that was showing nothing but promise.
We can only comment on what we read, see and hear as we are not party to any inside knowledge. It just seems that to the money men, promise is not enough; they want to see results and perhaps the results to date were not what were promised.
From a marketing perspective, it seems that the ‘No Catch’ story also did not live up to the promise. IntraFish describes ‘No Catch’ as one of the most successful seafood brands in recent history, but was it? We are not so sure.
IntraFish report that at the time the financing collapsed, ‘No Catch’ organic cod was being sold in 10 European countries with listings in some of the biggest names in retail. However, what was the ‘No Catch’ brand and what message did it convey? Karol Rzepkowski, former ‘No Catch’ director told IntraFish that ‘No Catch’ was just a name. Yet clearly it was more than that.
IntraFish describes ‘No Catch’ as both an organic aquaculture producer and also a cod farmer that introduced farmed cod to the masses. Clearly, the ‘No Catch’ name was built on the back of a working cod farm but it wasn’t the world’s first cod farm, although it was in Shetland. There are plenty of other cod farms in operation some of whose produce found its way into British supermarkets before ‘No Catch’. It wasn’t even true that ‘No Catch’ introduced farmed cod to the masses since their cod was promoted as organic and therefore of interest to this small niche section of the market since most consumers would be unlikely to pay £20/kg for cod if the same stores were offering wild caught fish at below half that price.
‘No Catch’ was clearly associated with organic cod yet, some retailers did not believe that the organic standard attained was sufficiently stringent enough to warrant being called organic. IntraFish had suggested that ‘No Catch’ were willing to remove the organic status from their cod in order to obtain a listing in these stores.
Although ‘No Catch’ was promoted as an organic producer, their organic status was already compromised. One of the new products listed on the ‘No Catch’ website was sustainable, but not organic, halibut fillets. This meant that the ‘No Catch’ range was no longer a truly organic range anyway.
‘No Catch’ was deemed to be a success because of the way it was taken up by so many retail multiples. The question is whether this success was based on the strength of the brand or because there was no other organic cod on the market which could be sold under own label. Only time would have told whether the brand was strong enough to hold out against identical supermarket own label product. The fact that they had also indicated that they were to supply ‘No Catch’ organic salmon but none was listed in any supermarket suggests that own label would replace branded ‘No Catch’ products if alternative supplies were available.
‘No Catch’ suggested that their brand was a success yet it had also failed long before the company. ‘No Catch’ organic sea trout was listed in Tesco’s stores but did not last long before being delisted. It is possible to argue that the market wasn’t ready for organic sea trout but a strong brand might have encouraged shoppers to try it.
The fact that it didn’t last long is indication that the brand was not powerful enough to persuade consumers away from their cod purchase. The brand simply wasn’t strong enough. Mike Lloyd, another ‘No Catch’ director told IntraFish that they established a consumer brand in just 18 months. He added that if that had been Coca Cola, they’d have spent a fortune. That is perhaps why, Coca Cola is a well established brand and ‘No Catch’ is being consigned to history.
So where does this leave the cod farming industry? Cod are almost unique in the aquaculture industry in that there is still a significant wild catch reaching market, at prices which make farmed cod uncompetitive. Until the availability of wild cod is reduced or prices increased, farmed cod will only be a success if it is positioned away from the wild catch. It needs to be perceived as being different and more importantly, it needs to be different. This is the challenge now facing the cod farming industry.
Whilst cod is considered to be the species of fish most associated with British consumers, the reality is very different. Salmon still remains Britain’s most popular fish with sales of £606 million compared with £379 million for cod. Interestingly, the SeaFish data shows that despite this variation in value, volumes sold of the two species were actually very similar; 54,183 tonnes for salmon and 54,172 tonnes for cod.
Next week, we’ll look at the promotions used over Easter to encourage consumers to buy more salmon. Until then we wish you a happy Easter.