FAL has issued a press release in response to the so-called Common Fisheries Policy reform, calling it, appropriately enough, The Sinking Titanic.

Baroness Parminter's Question

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to achieve reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.

Statement made both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords about the last Agriculture and Fisheries Council on June 28, attended Richard Benyon and Richard Lochhead MSP.

The Statement deals with the proposed Commission plan to change various regulations in the CFP in order to turn the policy into a sustainable one.

Commissioner Damanaki spoke about the Commission's proposed framework for setting catch levels for 2012 and beyond via the total allowable catch (TAC) and quota regulation (TQR). Against a backdrop of the poor state of many EU fish stocks and the continued issue of overfishing, the Commission announced its aim to ensure that all fish stocks should be fished within the threshold of maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2015 and where there was insufficient scientific advice or data the precautionary approach should be adopted and a cut of 25 per cent should be applied to the TAC. Commissioner Damanaki also explained that she intended to split the TQR into two parts this year in order to improve the process: internal stocks to be decided at the November council and external (those subject to international negotiations, principally joint EU-Norway stocks) in December.

There was near universal opposition to the idea of the 25 per cent cut for data-poor stocks with 19 of the 22 fishing member states (and Austria) explicitly opposing this. There was concern that this approach would merely increase levels of discarded fish in many cases and that a more targeted approach, using all available data or advice, even incomplete, would be preferable.

There was widespread concern among all fishing member states about aspects of the MSY principle. Nearly all noted that 2015 was the target for all fisheries and that this should be achieved on a gradual basis. The UK, along with Ireland, Spain, Belgium and coastal state in the Baltic expressed concern about how individual species MSY targets could be identified correctly in a multi-species environment.

The UK, Spain, Denmark, France, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Austria also expressed concern about the idea of splitting the TQR decision-making across two councils, creating administrative inefficiency.

As usual there are several various documents, all dry as dust and hard to digest but they are out. Here is the link. We shall be analyzing them and picking up other comments as time goes on.

... for the Commission's plan, it is interesting to find this on the BBC site

Maritime and Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki said that the EU had to admit that the policy so far had been a failure.

"There is overfishing; we have 75% overfishing of our stocks and comparing ourselves to other countries we cannot be happy," Ms Damanaki told BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

"So we have to change. Let me put it straight - we cannot afford business as usual any more because the stocks are really collapsing."

What is billed as "the most radical reform of the CFP in its history" is due to be proposed tomorrow by the European Commission. This blog prefers to wait for the document and to analyze the details, wherein the devil will lie. After all, we have heard about radical reforms before and it seems to us that it is a little premature to start rejoicing about a purported victory over fish discards, particularly if that victory will mean more fishing jobs lost in the United Kingdom.

We have received the following information and comment from Callander MCDowell:

Fish to Landfill: This week, UK Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon spoke at a press meeting in advance of EU proposals to reform the Common Fisheries policy. According to Seafood Source, Mr Benyon is an ardent supporter of Mrs Damanaki’s reforms which he hopes will bring about an end to discards. However, he said any ban on discards must be practical. Mr Benyon also said that a discard ban would satisfy most of the 650,000 people who signed the Fish Fight petition (although we suspect that this is an issue that most of the 650,000 have already long forgotten having being persuaded by others to sign) but that he doesn’t want to achieve a system whereby we’ll be putting good fish in landfill because we can’t throw them overboard at sea.

Mr Benyon’s suggestion that any fish might be consigned to landfill is astonishing, especially as his department has just spent £330.000 looking at ways in which discards could be utilised. Unfortunately, as we have previously discussed, the Fishing for the Markets project appears to have failed to come up with anything new. One of their suggestions was to use the fish for fishmeal production which is probably what would happen if fishermen were prevented from throwing the fish back into the sea. There is absolutely no reason to even consider landfill as a possible solution and it is hard to understand why such an idea would even be considered. The problem with fishmeal production is that those who are against discards also seem to be against the idea of feeding fish to fish and so fishmeal production would probably bring about even more objections than discards.

Thus the only realistic solution emanating from the Fishing from the Markets project is to get chefs to promote greater consumption of under utilised species. This coming week, Mr Benyon’s department are sponsoring a day at Billingsgate Seafood Training School in which chefs will be shown how to prepare and cook these fish. We’ve yet to be convinced that the public can be converted to eating more of these species by this route. Just this Friday, Sainsbury’s continued to promote their Switch the Fish campaign with the appearance of their Switch the Fish van in central Manchester. The weather was not in their favour but even though there were many people on the streets during the lunch time rush, we didn’t see that much interest in Sainsbury’s promotion. There seemed to be more staff than visitors.

Mr Benyon has remained surprisingly quiet about what to do about discards despite being very vocal at its launch of his project. Perhaps we will need to wait to hear directly from Mr Benyon as to whether it is the fish or the Fishing for the Markets project which are most likely to end up in landfill.