Callander McDowell
Callander McDowell
reLAKSation no 401
Eat more fish!: The Scottish Executive reports that Fisheries Secretary, Richard Lochhead, used the occasion of the Fishing 2009 Expo in Glasgow to launch a major push to get consumers to eat more Scottish fish. He said that not only is fish great value for money but it also can deliver major health benefits.
Mr Lochhead said that despite being one of Europe’s primary fishing nations, Scotland consumes much less fish than other countries, lagging well behind even Latvia, Malta and Finland. The Food Standards Agency advises consumption of two portions of fish a week (280g) but during 2005-2007, Scottish consumption fell to only 155g a week. Consumption in the rest of the UK was not much better at 178g in 2007, down from 185g in 2006.
To help reverse these trends, the Scottish Executive unveiled plans with the following key points:
-Promotional work by SeaFish to raise awareness of the health benefits of eating fish.
-A Scotland-wide competition to find the country’s best young seafood chef.
-A new web portal to give consumers a single source of advice on buying and eating Scottish fish, including recipes.
-Seafood promotions at public events, including the Taste Festival in Edinburgh
We, at Callander McDowell, welcome any attempt to help increase seafood consumption but we have been rather under-whelmed by these plans and doubt whether they will do much to boost consumption. This is because we simply don’t think that they are targeted at those who most need to be convinced to eat fish.
We don’t have access to the latest consumption figures from Scotland but TNS conducted a survey for BIM in Ireland at the end of last year and found that the highest fish consumers were typically females, aged 45 plus and in socio-economic groups A and B. By comparison, the lightest consumers were males aged 15-24 and in groups C2DE. In addition, they found that nearly 30% of those in the 25 and under age group never eat fish at all. Whilst this data originates from Ireland, we would be very surprised if Scottish data was much different.
We believe that the main targets for Mr Lochhead’s plans are those in the lowest socio-economic groups and, most especially, the younger sections of the population. Unfortunately, we doubt whether these potential consumers will even hear of the campaign, let alone benefit from it. This is because we believe that the plans are geared to those who already eat fish, not those that don’t.
This is not surprising since the easy option has always been to persuade existing fish consumers to increase their consumption. This is because existing consumers are already familiar with buying and eating fish and with a little incentive can be encouraged to buy another portion or pack. By comparison, trying to persuade those parts of the population who never eat fish to start doing so is much, much harder. Yet this is the challenge to which the fish and seafood industry should be responding.
Certainly, Mr Lochhead’s intention is to engage in more promotional work by SeaFish to raise consumer awareness of the health benefits of eating fish. However, this is what SeaFish already do. We have written extensively about their ‘Seafood Week’ promotions over the years suggesting that they have really failed to make an impact on fish and seafood consumption amongst those who are low or non-consumers. The figures relayed by the Scottish Executive that indicate a fall in UK fish consumption appear to confirm this. This is because in our view, that these promotions usually focus on the fish counter or the chilled fish cabinet and are only seen by those who are already buying fish. We often draw the analogy that shoppers who don’t own a pet dog or cat never visit the supermarket pet food aisle. In much the same way, those who never buy fish avoid visiting the fish counter and thus never see the relevant promotions. This year, SeaFish have dropped the Seafood Week/Fortnight promotion and their new campaigns have not yet reached the consumers so we are unable to comment as to whether they might be more relevant to those who don’t eat fish now.
Mr Lochhead also announced the launch of the young seafood chef competition, details of which were outline by Fisheunews.com. These include a trip for the finalists to visit the North East Scottish fishing ports where they will visit the fish markets and join a group of fishermen for a seafood supper. The intention is to give the finalists a greater understanding of the seafood industry but how this will encourage consumers to eat more fish is unclear. As the winner will cook the winning dish at a Ministerial dinner, it seems that it might be the Fisheries Minister himself who will benefit most from the competition as he gets to eat the winning dish.
The Minister also plans a new web portal to give consumers a single source of advice on buying and eating Scottish fish. This portal is already up and running and provides links to a variety of websites belonging to a range of organisations with connection to fish and seafood in Scotland. Many of the websites are not exactly consumer friendly and would not be considered the first point of call from anyone trying to learn the basics of buying and cooking fish. In fact, we cannot see how anyone in, what we consider the main target group, would even try to access this new portal (www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Fisheries/fish).
The last part of Mr Lochhead’s plan is to promote seafood at public events. The example he gives is the Taste Festival in Edinburgh this weekend. This is part of a series of commercial food festivals around the country organised by Channel 4 TV. They include demonstrations by celebrity chefs, sample restaurant meals and a food fair or farmers market. These Taste Festivals mainly attract foodies and gourmands and those that are interest in food and cookery. They do not attract those with just a casual interest because they are not cheap to attend. It costs £16 to get into the festival and each of the sample restaurant menus cost around a further £10 to buy. Then the expected 25,000 visitors over three days can have the opportunity to spend more money at the 100 or so specialist traders. A visit to the Taste Festival is not cheap and unlikely to appeal to those who should be the main targets of Mr Lochhead’s appeal to eat more fish.
One of the organisations responding to Mr Lochhead’s challenge to promote fish and seafood at such public events is ‘Seafood Scotland’. Not only have they taken a stand at the show but are also one of the main sponsors.
We, at Callander McDowell, have often been criticised for being too ready to find fault with some aspects of fish and seafood marketing without offering an alternative solution. However, like other companies working in the fish and seafood industry, Callander McDowell is a commercial business and as such any solutions are reserved for those who recognise that they come at a cost. Nevertheless, this is such an important issue that we would like to put forward one suggestion as to how Mr Lochhead and the industry could extend the reach of their message to those who most need it.
It is not news that one of the main reasons given by those people who don’t eat fresh fish and seafood is that they don’t know how to prepare fish or how to cook it. Many also don’t like the look of whole fish nor like having to deal with the bones. Some are even put off by the smell. Such people never go near the fresh fish counter so promotions that focus on the fish itself are never seen by these non-consumers. We have previously argued that if consumers do not go near the supermarket fish sections and thus never see the products or offers, then they should be placed in those positions where these potential consumers will see them. In the same way, the industry needs to take this campaign to increase fish consumption directly to them. This is never going to be easy but this is no excuse for not bothering to at least try to get the message across to these target consumers.
Of course, there’s more to healthy eating than omega-3’s and as such it is not so easy to separate increased fish consumption from the wider issues of healthy living. Celebrity chef Jaime Oliver may have had the right idea using his TV programmes to promote healthy eating in schools and at home. He took his cookery direct to the public showing them exactly how to make the best of their everyday cooking but as he found, this is a much greater challenge than demonstrating a few recipes. Encouraging healthy eating cannot be isolated away from the wider governmental responsibilities of health care and education.
By co-incidence, the Herald newspaper has just reported that eight Scottish communities are to trial a healthy living programme that has been pioneered in France. This is to create Healthy Weight Communities that will bring whole towns together to get people more active and eat more healthily. The intention is to target people in local settings such as schools, shops, parks and community centres. The Public Health Minister for Scotland, Shona Robinson said that she hopes that this new initiative will tackle issues like obesity and support people to make changes in the way that they lead their lives. The programme will include taste experiences, family breakfasts, school walking clubs, agriculture discovery days and local gala days.
Clearly, the fish and seafood industry has a part to play in this initiative but it is still early days. Meanwhile, Mr Lochhead’s plans to promote increased fish consumption are already underway independently.
The key question is how this campaign can reach those who are least likely to eat fish and thus obtain the maximum health benefits?
Whilst it would be ideal to arrange for a chef to visit every home to demonstrate how to cook some simple fish and seafood dishes, the ideal is unrealistic. Instead, we need to find other ways to get wholesome but simple fish cookery advice to those who need it most.
One of the links on the new web portal is the BBC TV food website. This offers many hundreds of recipes, taken mainly from the BBC’s variety of cookery programmes including recipes from those celebrity chefs most associated with fish such as Rick Stein, but many others too. However, many of these recipes are far from simple and are unlikely to encourage those with an aversion to cooking fish.
The BBC website also hosts a number of short video master-class presentations which are available to the public to watch. Video presentations seem like a good way to overcome the severe lack of knowledge amongst much of the population about how to deal with fish. Unfortunately, those available on the BBC’s website, as well as those on other food channels, are typically aimed at those with a real interest in food. It is unlikely that those who do not have an interest in buying and eating fish would want to watch such demonstrations. Even if they happen to find the right site, we suspect that they are more likely to further deter interest in trying fish. For example, one of the master-classes is a demonstration of how to gut and prepare whole fish. We, at Callander McDowell, know a lot of people who buy and eat fish, but we don’t know of anyone who would readily buy whole ungutted fish and then prepare it themselves. Such advice is just not appropriate.
This master-class, in common with many of the recipes given is really aimed at those with some knowledge of fish cookery, not those who never eat fish. If we are to persuade such people to try buying and cooking fish then we need to start with the basics, but not the basics of whole fish. Instead, we need to show how easy it is to buy a simple boneless and skinless fillet and then cook it.
Our suggestion is that the industry, with Mr Lochhead’s assistance, could prepare a DVD for circulation to specifically targeted households. The DVD could be combined with a voucher to encourage consumers to actually go out and buy fish. Free DVD’s may seem a costly expense but newspapers and magazines give them away all the time. Whilst newspapers reach many households, a better more targeted distribution could be arranged through local councils who are better placed to identify those communities most in need of advice and encouragement. They could even be delivered by hand alongside other community newsletters.
Of course, there is no guarantee that households will not just throw the DVD straight into the rubbish bin. Few households would be interested in watching a DVD of a handful of recipe demonstrations, after all anyone taking time out to watch through the current offering of video recipes would soon see how predictable and boring they can get. Instead, the DVD should be made exciting and of interest to the target audience. There is no reason why the DVD cannot be an amalgam of recipes, advice, music, local celebrities (not chefs) more in line with a celebrity gossip magazine. There can even be a children’s section with cartoons and interactive games.
Eating fish should be associated with fun.
We have searched through the internet for examples of a different approach and we have embedded a couple of videos below to illustrate what we mean. One simple recipe we found shows how to cook mustard crusted salmon which is about as simple as it can get. The point is that it focuses on a skinless & boneless fillet which looks as far away from a whole fish as possible. It is simple to prepare and even easier to cook. The chef even shows a simple way to gauge whether the fish is cooked.
Mustard crusted salmon is one example of how simple a straight-forward demonstration can be, but it is still rather conventional. By comparison, we came across another video that has injected fun into the possibilities of fish cookery. Whilst it is not a serious demonstration, it does illustrate that such videos do not have to all follow the same format.
The potential for ideas is endless. As we have said it should all be about fun rather than the same old tired messages and presentations. It is only necessary to look at the presentation made about the launch of this campaign to see how easy it is to induce a yawn into this important issue.