Tuesday, 4th October 2011
UK Aquaculture Forum - Opening Remarks by Struan Stevenson MEP
UK Aquaculture Forum
Scotland House
Rond Point Schuman 6
Brussels
4th October 2011
Conference Opening Remarks by Struan Stevenson MEP.
Struan Stevenson is a Conservative Euro MP for Scotland and Senior Vice-President of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee. He is also President of the Climate Change & Biodiversity Intergroup in the European Parliament.
Three years ago, I addressed a conference on aquaculture and complained that although Europe used to lead the world in the production of farmed fish we had taken our eye off the ball and allowed our non-EU competitors to assume dominance in the sector, while our indigenous industry haemorrhaged jobs to countries outside the EU. I noted that we were heavily reliant on imported fish to meet almost 50% of our seafood needs when we are perfectly capable of producing this food ourselves.
I then went on to launch a savage attack on some of that imported fish...namely Pangasius, stating that the 250,000 tonnes a year we import from Vietnam alone is produced in poor quality fish farms in the Mekong Delta, in polluted water and processed in factories that can never hope to meet our rigorous EU standards.
I complained that aquaculture had become one of the most heavily regulated sectors in the entire food production industry in Europe, noting that EU fish-farmers had to deal with over 400 different pieces of regulation, not to mention additional planning and environmental constraints in the Member States, before they could reel in a single fish.
I blamed the European Commission for ignoring the importance of aquaculture, starving it of cash and burdening it with relentless regulation.
Well, Ladies & Gentlemen, I'm glad to say that things have changed in three years!
We have a Commissioner in Maria Damanaki who recognises that Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector in the world, with an annual growth rate of 6-8%. Mrs Damanaki knows that the EU can once again assume a global leadership role in fish farming; because in Europe we have the perfect environment for fish farming. We have an almost limitless coastline with ideal bays, fjords and sea conditions. And we lead the world in the science and technology necessary for a thriving aquaculture sector. At a time when demand for healthy fish products is rising internationally, while marine fish stocks continue to decline, the opportunities for EU aquaculture are boundless.
Interestingly, the world population is growing at an average of 1.6% per year so the combined result of development in aquaculture worldwide and the expansion in global population is that the average annual per capita supply of food fish from aquaculture for human consumption has increased by ten times, from 0.7 kg in 1970 to 7.8 kg in 2008, at an average rate of 6.6 percent per year.
Globally, aquaculture accounted for 45.7% of the world’s fish food production for human consumption in 2008, up from 42.6 percent in 2006. In China, the world’s largest aquaculture producer, 80.2% of fish consumed in 2008 was derived from aquaculture, up from 23.6% in 1970. Aquaculture production supplied the rest of the world with 26.7% of its food fish, up from 4.8% in 1970.
World aquaculture output has increased substantially, from less than 1 million tonnes of annual production in 1950 to the 52.5 million tonnes reported for 2008, increasing at three times the rate of world meat production.
But if European aquaculture is going to contribute strongly to the consumption demands from our 500 million citizens, the sector still has work to do. It will have to grow between 2.3 and 7.5 fold by 2025.
Large scale fish farms began in Europe in the 1970s. The EU produces 1.3 million metric tonnes of farmed seafood a year worth nearly €3 billion representing 17% of the volume and 27% of the value of the EU's total seafood production. About ¾ of the EU's farmed fish production comes from sea-based cages; mainly: salmon, trout, sea bass and sea bream, quadrupling since 1990. Norway is Europe's main salmon producer providing 72%. The UK follows with 20%, Faroes 5%, Ireland 2% and Iceland 1%.
In the EU, the species most produced in aquaculture is the Mediterranean mussel, representing 23% of EU aquaculture production yet the most profitable is Atlantic salmon, accounting for 20% of the value of EU aquaculture products. The top species produced by the UK is Atlantic salmon, accounting for 75% of UK aquaculture production:
As we know, in Scotland, there are salmon farms in the Highlands, the Western Isles, Orkney and the Shetlands. In the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, the main species are sea bass, sea bream and Bluefin tuna.
In October 2009, Marine Harvest, the largest salmon producer in the world, announced plans to build Scotland's first offshore fish farm in the Minch and expect to have the farms stocked by 2012.
Of course, many problems remain. The industry is regularly attacked by the Greens, who are happy to see our coasts and bays industrialised with giant offshore wind, wave and tidal constructions which will treble the cost of electricity, destroy our tourist trade and contribute exactly nothing to cutting CO2, while they baulk at the thought of unobtrusive modern fish farms, which contribute significantly to food production.
Fish farms are still beset with too much red tape and regulation and this is something the REU institutions and the Member State governments must tackle.
But great improvements have been made. Where once our fish farms were criticised for the wasteful use of resources, through a feed conversion rate that was as much as 5 to 1, scientific advances have helped to get this ratio down to almost 1 to 1 in most cases, dramatically cutting the amount of fishmeal and fish oil required for modern feed.
It is always worth reminding our critics that it takes roughly 10 kg of forage fish to produce 1 kg of salmon caught in the wild. Indeed certain trout and salmon farms achieve a feed conversion ratio of less than 1:1, making them far more efficient converters of marine protein than their wild counterparts. As fish feeds represent an increasingly high share of total production costs, Europe's fish farmers have every interest in using feeds as effectively as possible and go to great lengths to avoid waste.
As you know, our Fisheries Committee in the European Parliament is now embarking on the decisive and highly-charged debate on CFP Reform. Aquaculture plays a significant role in the Commissions published draft regulations, reflecting Commissioner Damanaki's determination to regain lost ground in this sector.
The Commission's policy towards aquaculture is outlined in Article 43 of the Basic Regulation where it has promised to establish guidelines on priorities and targets for aquaculture by 2013, inviting Member States to establish multiannual plans by 2014.
Article 43 calls for
(a) improving the competitiveness of the aquaculture industry and supporting its development and innovation;
(b) encouraging economic activity;
(c) diversification and improvement of the quality of life in coastal and rural areas;
(d) a level-playing field for aquaculture operators in relation to access to waters and space.
The Commission even calls for the creation of an Advisory Council for Aquaculture, noting that the current Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) will be replaced by general Advisory Councils whose competences will then stretch to aquaculture. This is a very positive step and one in which we could grasp the opportunity to set up the EU's first Aquaculture Advisory Council, with its headquarters in Scotland. After all, it was Ann Bell and Aberdeenshire Council who set up the first RAC in Europe - The North Sea RAC and it was then used as a template for setting up all the others.
NGOs have certain concerns regarding aquaculture including: corporate exploitation, pollution, fish escapes, disease outbreaks, unsustainable feed ingredients and dependence on dangerous chemicals. Whilst some of these concerns are valid, many would be rectified with a common approach to aquaculture development within the EU.
In a strategy document released by the European Commission in 2009, they established a list of goals of reducing pollution from fish farms, preserving water quality, reducing fish escapes, guaranteeing the health and welfare of farmed fish, developing sustainable sources of feed, cracking down on the improper use of medicines, ensuring consumer safety, improving stakeholder participation and transparency and improving government monitoring of the industry.
Similarly, in February 2010, the EP adopted with an overwhelming majority, its own initiative report on 'New Impetus for the Strategy for the Sustainable Development of European Aquaculture', developing a European-wide legislative framework for aquaculture (The Milana Report). The main issues in the report were the development of remote and coastal areas and an increase in good quality seafood products. An amendment to the report was adopted which underlined the importance of eliminating those aquaculture systems which deplete wild fish stocks or pollute coastal waters.
So we are making progress. But let me make a final comment on Pangasius. I told you how three years ago I launched a savage attack on Pangasius imports. Well I subsequently had to eat humble pie on this issue....or maybe I should say Humble Fish Pie!
It is always difficult for a politician to admit to being wrong, but after my outburst against Pangasius or Vietnamese River Cobbler Fish three years ago, I was called to account from an unexpected source – The Institute of Aquaculture at Stirling University in my own constituency. The large team at Stirling have been working with the Vietnamese fish farmers for years, training them on all aspects of hygiene, welfare, feeding and fish health. They gave me a right bollocking, followed by an extremely interesting half-day crash course in Vietnamese fish farming.
Next, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) invited me to visit the Mekong Delta and see for myself the condition of their fish farms and processing factories and the Vietnamese Government invited me to meet Fisheries Minister in Hanoi. I went to Vietnam in April this year and it was a real eye-opener!
I visited spotless processing factories and well-run fish farms. I discovered that the thousands of workers employed in the industry, many of them women, have good working conditions and earn well above average pay rates.
I visited the Vinh Hoan Corporation, who employ over 4000 staff. They told me that they are not onlyinspected and approved by the European Commission, but the company’s extensive fish farms and processing plants are regularly audited by ASDA, TESCO, CARREFOUR and many of the major EU supermarket chains and they pass muster every time. It is an over-used cliché but nevertheless accurate in this case: the vast Vinh Hoan factory in Cao Lanh was so spotlessly clean that you could literally eat your dinner off the floor.
Far from the dirty, unhygienic and polluted business I had spoken about, I discovered a dynamic new industry, meeting world-class welfare and hygiene standards and producing a quality product under first-rate conditions. Fish farms provide jobs and income for millions of desperately poor people in the Mekong Delta, in secure jobs with proper social security benefits and pension provisions. The bio-security I encountered in the Vinh Hoan factory was second to none. The army of workers were clad in white gowns, hairnets, hats, gloves and boots. There was a constant system of washing and disinfecting. I have rarely seen anything better in Europe.
We have to come to terms with this. We operate in a global market. We have to be able to compete with imports of this nature. We don't have the conditions to produce Pangasius in Europe anyway, so we should look on such imports as a necessary and reliable food source, coming from a sector that purchases intellectual property and high tech equipment from Europe, ensuring that there will always be two-way trade traffic. In any case, we are now developing a significant new market in salmon exports to China and other key developing markets around the world, so it ill behoves us to complain about fish imports from Vietnam! I have learned that lesson!
So, Ladies & Gentlemen, we look ahead with some confidence. If we overcome the constraints to development, aquaculture has a bright future in Europe, producing products of high quality while conserving the natural resources that are required for its very existence. The targets are clear, the prospects are bright and the barriers to progress have been clearly identified. The Commission, the Parliament, the Member States and the sector need to forge a new partnership so that we can once again lead the world in fish farming.
STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP
