Wednesday, 3rd March 2010
Fishmeal and Fish Oil Conference
Firstly can I thank EBCD and Despina Symons and her staff for organising today’s Hearing. EBCD provide the secretariat for the Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development which I have the privilege to chair. We are the biggest intergroup in the European Parliament enjoying the support of the four main political groups and with over 200 MEPs as members. Our Intergroup has always been the main vehicle for securing dialogue between the Commission, the Parliament, the Council and the stakeholders in matters to do with fisheries and maritime affairs and we will continue to play that role, as today’s Hearing clearly demonstrates. Our Sub-Group on Fisheries is in the very capable hands of Pat the Cope Gallagher, a former Fisheries Minister in the Irish Government.
As you know, the Fisheries Committee is taking a particular interest in the future of aquaculture in the EU. Europe used to lead the world in aquaculture, but we took our eye off the ball and allowed our competitors outside the EU to take the lead. We are now determined to redress the balance. That is why the Fisheries Committee held a major Hearing on EU Aquaculture last week here in Brussels and that is why we have appointed Mr Milana, a Vice President of the Fisheries Committee, as our rapporteur, to provide the answers which will help us kick-start the aquaculture sector in Europe.
The debate on fishmeal is of key interest to the aquaculture industry. I was the rapporteur on a major report on fishmeal and fish oil in the last parliament. It is an indispensable part of the feeding regime for farmed fish. It is a vital part of the diet for farmed species like salmon, trout, seabass, seabream, cod and eels. But the high natural content of healthy omega 3 in both fish oil and fishmeal and the excellent nutritional properties of fishmeal make it an essential ingredient for fish diets as well as a valuable supplement in the diets of domesticated animals such as poultry, pigs, sheep and cattle, especially for young livestock. The advantages of feeding fishmeal and fish oil to farm animals have been known for around two thousand years. Even the ancient Romans knew that fishmeal contains highly digestible protein, essential fatty acids, as well as a number of important minerals. Ancient Roman chronicles relate how fish used to be laid on the beach to dry in the sun, then it would be ground up and fed to sheep and goats.
As well as providing the animals concerned with an excellent diet, the highly unsaturated fatty acids in the fishmeal, often referred to as omega 3s, ensure that the finished food products have health benefits for consumers. Western dietary intake of omega 3s has fallen over recent decades and there is increasing evidence of the need to boost the levels in conjunction with reducing the intake of omega 6 fatty acids.
The fishmeal and fish oil industry provides over 30,000 direct jobs across the EU and is of vital importance to the economic well-being of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors. We currently import a lot of fishmeal and fish oil from Peru, against a background of the usual crescendo of ill-informed comments about the over-exploitation of the Peruvian anchovy fishery and the wasteful 4 to 1 or some say even 5 or 6 to 1 ratio required to produce farmed fish. All of this is nonsense. Let us get one thing straight; the Peruvian anchovy fishery is fully sustainable…In fact the Association of Peruvian Anchovy Fishermen are currently seeking an MSC Sustainable fishery ecolabel, because their fishery is fully sustainable. In addition, the sale of fish meal and fish oil provides Peru with valuable income which enables it to feed its more than 25 million poor.
And as for the bogus fish-in/fish-out figures…the amount of fish meal and fish oil utilised in aquaculture feed mixes has been steadily reduced and is now down to around 25% or less. There is even one commercial feed with only 15% fishmeal, we were told by experts at our Aquaculture Hearing last week. The ratio used to be as high as 70%. Scientists are working hard to reduce it even further, but it is worth remembering that the kind of fish we like to eat are not vegetarians. They are not the type of fish that will survive on a diet of barley and soya beans! We haven't discovered a taste in Europe for Tilapia or Carp. The kind of fish we like to eat are cannibals. They eat other fish.
But scientists have managed to get the food conversion ratio (kg of feed per kg of animal produced) down to 1.1 kg of feed per kg of salmon, whereas chickens are in the 2.5 kg of feed per kg of chicken range and cattle are in the range of 7 kg of feed to 1 kg of beef produced.
The European Parliament and the Commission are currently studying ways to end the scandalous problem of discards, which sees Europe’s fishermen dumping over one million tonnes of healthy fish each year, dead, back into the sea. I think we have an ideal opportunity here to use immature or out of quota fish for processing into fishmeal and fish oil, thus avoiding the horrendous waste and environmental pollution involved in their wanton dumping overboard.
The processing sector has confirmed that they would be happy to compensate fishermen for this fish at a rate which is not so attractive that it would encourage targeting of these species, but attractive enough to discourage dumping over the side. This would resolve the problem of what to do with the million tonnes of fish that would otherwise have been discarded, when we introduce a ‘land-all’ policy.
