Cod Again: Our comments last week provoked quite a response from some of our readers. Rather surprisingly, the most vocal views mainly concerned our suggestion that the word ‘Farmed’ should be dropped as the main descriptor on supermarket labels of ‘Farmed cod fillet’. This brought cries that we were out to deceive consumers but as we highlighted in the discussion we were not suggesting anything of the kind. We did say that it is a legal requirement for all fish sold in the EU to be labelled with the method of production and the country of origin so ‘Norwegian farmed cod fillet’ would have to be labelled as ‘Farmed in Norway’. The point we were trying to make is that the use of the word ‘Farmed’ in the main descriptor is currently a deterrent to buying these fish, at least when wild cod fillet is sold alongside.

We will discuss the points made by our readers a little later in this comment but first would just like to continue with our observations of the response to the market to farmed cod. We pointed out that all previous attempts to sell farmed cod in the UK have not been sustained. In most cases, the fish have had to be discounted to overcome the barrier that consumers have established between farmed and wild cod. The outcome is that the fish have had to be sold so cheaply, it has not proved to be economically viable. We reported the most recent attempt to sell farmed cod in the UK at one regional supermarket chain. Farmed cod was sold alongside wild cod at £12.00/kg. Fish counter staff suggested that the wild fish were more popular and that the farmed cod sold better when no wild fish were present.

This week, the store has slashed the price of farmed cod by £3/kg to £9/kg whilst the wild fish remain at £12/kg. If observations of other supermarkets are anything to go on, then after the promotion, the price will revert to its former price and any increase is sales gained from the lower promotional price will be reversed. Eventually low sales may lead to farmed cod being delisted. (Of course, we may be wrong).

At the same time, this supermarket has recently reintroduced Findus’s frozen sustainably farmed cod and this product is now being offered in Bogof (Buy One Get One Free). Other supermarkets have previously stocked this product but eventually delisted it after offering discounts.

Our observations suggest a clear and recurring pattern to retail farmed cod sales. We have conducted taste tests on farmed and wild cod and have not found anything that would be a deterrent and most of the farmed cod looks visually appealing. So clearly something else is going wrong.

Karin Olsen, white fish marketing manager for the Norwegian Seafood Export Council told kyst.no that the crisis in the farmed cod industry before Christmas is not due to the wider economic situation. We wonder whether it would be better if it were, since there then could be an expectation that as the economic situation eases, the prospects for cod farming would improve. Instead, Ms Olsen has suggested that increased quotas means that there is more wild cod out in the marketplace. These fish will have placed more pressure on farmed cod prices. Ms Olsen has a firm belief in farmed cod and expects that there will be a major plan to promote this important farmed fish. Yet, as we have already suggested it is not the planned strategy that is at fault but rather the message it will convey.

It is too soon to say whether Ms Olsen is being too optimistic as to the future of cod farming. Klaus Hatlebrekke of DnB Nor Markets forecasts that with low prices and higher costs, there could well be a number of bankruptcies this year. He may be right.

Prices have recovered a little in the first weeks of this year. Reduced supplies of both farmed and wild cod have no doubt contributed to this recovery. The big question is how long can this recovery be sustained? The options for the cod farming industry are limited. We know that if prices are to fall, farmers must reduce their costs but this is not going to happen overnight. The real cost benefits come from the economies of scale but further expansion costs money.

The other option is to try to boost prices and this can only be achieved with a well-defined market-led strategy and one that doesn’t depend on the promotion of the farmed origin of these fish. The current economic situation may not help but despite reports to the contrary, there are people out there who are still spending money. It all depends on telling the right story.

As we said at the beginning of this comment, some of our readers think that telling the right story is not the same as telling the truth. We disagree. Telling the truth is the same as telling the right story, it is just about how the story is packaged. Interestingly, the most vociferous comments came from the Canadian west coast and one reader said that if wild cod are an obstacle to selling farmed cod then why not persuade governments to kill off wild stocks just as Canada has done with its wild salmon industry.

We would argue that the situation is Canada is very different to that in Europe and therefore it is not easy to draw direct comparison. However, there are many different factors that affect the state of wild salmon stocks. Most blame for the demise of wild salmon in BC seems to be attributed to salmon farms but we understand that by-catch of Pollock fishing and direct competition from hatchery reared Alaskan salmon may be contributory factors too.

By coincidence, seafoodintelligence.com referred to an article in the Yorkshire Post that has reported that salmon may soon be found again in the Rivers Aire and Wharfe and could even be spotted in the centre of Leeds. The town council are to be asked to fund fish passes to allow salmon to migrate back up these rivers long after salmon first disappeared from their waters.

The Yorkshire Post says that the rivers of Leeds have a history of degradation brought about by mining, industry, navigation and discharge of untreated effluent. Now due to improvements in water quality, better regulation and de-industrialisation, populations of a variety of fish have recovered. The hope is that salmon can be reintroduced to the upper reaches of these rivers.

These rivers discharge into the North Sea on the totally opposite side of the country to, and many hundreds of miles from, the nearest salmon farm. Salmon disappeared from these rivers long before the inception of salmon farming. Fish farming is just an easy target to blame. The removal of the word ‘Farmed’ from the main descriptor of retail labels does not alter this truth. 

Christmas offers: In common with previous years, we have monitored the price of whole salmon in the major UK retail outlets. Prices range from cheaper than last year to more expensive, whilst some prices remain the same. We have also recorded prices of whole salmon in French supermarkets. Prices very greatly between stores but can vary between different stores in the same chain. Stores of one retail chain didn’t stock any whole salmon during any of our visits, so last years’ price is included for comparison (Prices of other salmon presentations remain at a similar level).

In the run up to Christmas, IntraFish reported that reduced supply due to slaughter plants shutting early for the holidays helped push prices up, as did the strong exchange rate. This meant that salmon were selling up to NOK 30/kg. At current exchange rates this means that the difference in price between the Norwegian price and Tesco’s offer price amounted to just NOK 6/kg or just 50p/kg!

UK

Asda £5.00/kg save £1.99/kg

(same at 2007)

Booths £4.69/kg save £2.31/kg 

(30p/kg cheaper than 2007)

Morrisons £5.29/kg

(same as 2007)

Sainsburys £5.99/kg save £3/kg then £4.49/kg save £4.50/kg

(£1/kg more expensive than 2007)

Tesco £3.49/kg half price

(same as 2007)

Waitrose £3.99 half price

((90p/kg cheaper than 2007)

France

ATAC € 7.95/kg

Auchan € 4.95/kg

Carrefour € 5.50/kg

Casino € 5.95/kg

Champion € 9.90/kg

Cora € 6.95/kg

Geant € 4.59/kg

Intermarche (€ 5.50/kg last year)

LeClerc € 8.00/kg

Monoprix € 13.70/kg

Hyper U € 7.90/kg

Details of all the Christmas offers, whether fresh, chilled or smoked, can be found in the latest issue of our retail survey. Please contact us for further details.

Christmas present: One of the gifts we received at Christmas was the new cookbook from Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens. ‘Fish’, (Ebury Press £25) aims to build on Tom’s environmental concerns and is designed to ‘gently steer’ readers towards delicious but under-fished species. The problem with the cookbook is that right from the beginning Tom’s message is not only confused, but shows that he is liable to a double standard.

In his introduction, Tom says that at present, the most sought after fish are cod, salmon, haddock, plaice, sole, monkfish, turbot and halibut with the result that stocks of these fish are under the most pressure and in some cases are dangerously low. Tom suggest that if the public would buy and eat other species such as dab, flounder, pouting, gurnard, pollock and coley then the pressure on the more heavily fished species could be alleviated. He said that fishermen don’t catch these alternative species because there is no demand. He therefore advocates a change in attitude but he says that it is not enough to know about the problems, fishermen need to know that the public will buy these fish if they catch them. The aim of the cookbook is to encourage the public to try something new and different.

This is certainly a noble aim however if Tom Aikens wants to encourage the consumption of alternative species, then why has he included recipes for all those species (except halibut) that he says the public should avoid. Surely, he should have stuck by his principles and written a book devoted to recipes using only sustainably fished species. Bookshops are full of cookbooks written about fish. Tom’s book offers very little new except the introduction of his views and a snapshot of the fishing industry today.

Of course, this snapshot very much reflects Tom Aikens’s views and therefore much is given over to the Marine Conservation Society and the Marine Stewardship Council as well as explanation of the CFP (Common Fisheries Policy), TAC (Total Allowable Catch), ITQ (Individual Transferable Quota) TED (Turtle Exclusion Device) and CPUE (Catch per unit effort). By comparison his explanation of ‘Aquaculture’ is limited to ‘The farming of fish, shellfish and aquatic plants under controlled conditions’. Like other top chefs, Tom’s negative opinion of aquaculture is made very clear although it does seem that Tom is still somewhat confused to the potential benefits of farming fish.

The cookbook also includes an extensive guide to each fish species and the methods of fishing used to catch them. In his discussion of salmon, Tom asks whether farming could be the final nail in the coffin for this fish. He argues whilst it was originally thought that farming would relieve the pressure on wild stocks, sea lice, fungal infections and disease have killed thousands of wild salmon whilst pollution from waste feed, fish excrement and chemical treatments have damaged valuable ecosystems. He also suggests that escapees have bred with wild fish and diluted the genetic stock. He therefore urges readers to avoid the sad piece of salmon that sits in a polystyrene tray under cling film on supermarket shelves.

Yet when he turns his attention to sea bass, he says that from a conservation view, farming has single-handedly saved the wild sea bass population from being over-fished. It seems that for some species farming is acceptable whilst for others Tom has his doubts.

Because Tom Aikens comes from the fraternity that believes wild is good and farmed is bad, he has not really researched the subject well. Given that the book has just been published, some of the information cited is well out of date. In the section on facts and figures he quotes the figure of 29% as the amount of fish and shellfish coming from farming whilst well publicised data from the FAO in 2006 puts the figure at a much higher 43%.

Tom’s confusion about aquaculture is also reflected in the layout of the cookbook. Although there is a whole section devoted to an explanation of fish supply, he has secreted further information about the book in random places. Thus on the same page as a recipe for spider crab, Tom gives a brief outline of extensive warm-water pond culture of carp. On the same page as a recipe for pollack ceviche, Tom describes salmon farming.

However, it is on the page for Tartare of salmon that Tom devotes most space to aquaculture describing the work carried out by Loch Duart salmon to produce truly sustainable and environmentally responsible farmed salmon. All credit to Loch Duart for persuading Tom Aikens about the merits of their fish, which just goes to show how well a good marketing strategy works as the ingredient list for Tom’s salmon recipes ask for ‘good quality farmed salmon fillet such as Loch Duart’.

We don’t want to take anything away from Loch Duart, but Tom’s view of farmed salmon is extremely blinkered as can be seen by his comments that he is disheartened to see that this beautiful fish has been turned into a flabby, watery second-rate citizen. We, at Callander McDowell, have conducted quite a number of taste tests on farmed salmon, including that from Loch Duart, and can find little to differentiate one from another. In addition, many Scottish farms are now just as stringent about the environmental and welfare standards of the salmon they produce that it is hard to single out one from any other. However, we do appreciate that not all salmon sold in the UK is produced here. 

This is not Tom Aikens first attempt to spread the sustainability message. His sustainable fish and chip shop, Tom’s Place, only survived for a few months before shutting its doors suggesting that consumers were not prepared to forgo their traditional fish and chips for a more sustainable option. We suspect that a sustainable only cookbook might have suffered a similar fate.