Over 120 stakeholders from 19 countries met last week in Oostende, Belgium to review a series of sustainability indicators drawn up for fish and shellfish farming in Europe over the past three years by the CONSENSUS project – a multi-stakeholder platform for sustainable aquaculture in Europe.

“Aquaculture provides the consistency that customers need, and its products can be adapted to appeal to different customer types,” said Peter Hajipieris, group policy manager seafood for Tesco Stores Limited, at the conference. “You’re feeding the customer something that’s good for them. And that’s what seafood is all about.”

But today’s consumers need to be reassured that food products are not only wholesome and good value for money, but are produced in a sustainable way. To provide that reassurance, Tesco says it is evolving a pro-active, pragmatic approach, conscious of the global and cultural magnitude of the challenges, which includes reducing the number of “food miles” involved in bringing product to the consumer and the opportunities to do this in the seafood sector through European aquaculture.

“Our job as an industry is to provide reassurance,” said Mr Hajipieris. “Farmed seafood is great — a fantastic food in itself. It’s up to us to prove that it’s great. The intention to find indicators is absolutely right.”

CONSENSUS is an EU Sixth Framework initiative funded under the Key Action of Food Quality and Safety. It is driven by major European stakeholders representing consumer interests, aquaculture producers, aquatic feed suppliers, environmental, animal heath and welfare groups, as well as from various levels of legislative bodies in both the EU and Member States. With the increasing demand for seafood in Europe and the declining return from wild fisheries, aquaculture is seen as the industry that will meet this gap in the future.

Alistair Lane, Executive Director of the European Aquaculture Society pointed out that, while EU Fisheries are currently rated as 81% overfished, European aquaculture production of fish and molluscs rose from almost 690,000 tonnes in 1981 and is expected to outstrip wild fisheries production within 20 years. “The main aim of CONSENSUS is to ensure that sustainability becomes normal practice in this industry in terms of the environment, social contribution and economic success into the future,” he said.

Another major role of CONSENSUS is to demonstrate to consumers the health benefits of eating fish and shellfish grown in sustainable conditions. An information brochure has been prepared and will be presented to the food officers within the 41 member associations of the European Consumers’ Organisation.

“Consumers are asking more and more questions about aquaculture. We very much hope that consumer associations across Europe will use this balanced, fact-based information to answer those questions," added Mr Lane.

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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