|
THE seafood industry has delivered a strong call for Seafish to continue, its chief executive Paul Williams declared in Grimsby this week.
Mr Williams was speaking at a following up meeting with industry leaders at the Humber Seafood Institute following last year's series of consultative workshops.
He said: "The results show there is a strong mandate of Seafish to continue, and a strong mandate for it to continue being levy funded - but there is a also a strong mandate for it to reform.The message we received from the industry is that Seafiish is moving in the right direction and it is prepared to give it another chance.”
Mr William said it was planned to reform the main board structure to include four independent representatives. There would also be three new panels representing the domestic and export, processing and import and the consumer sectors.
He announced that another of the main changes would be to establish what Seafish needed to do and then structure the budget from the bottom up based on need, rather than the old system of receiving a sum of money and then deciding how it should be spent.
He said that once the panels had been established, hopefully by the autumn, the levy and the way it operated would be reviewed and he thought a reduction quite possible.There had also been calls for farmed salmon to be included in the levy, but this was not likely to happen in a hurry because it needed Parliamentary time and new legislation.
However, Wynne Griffiths, former head of Young’s Seafood and now chairman of the Humber Seafood Group, said fish and seafood was the only industry which paid such a levy. “There is no levy on poultry, pigs or beef, yet we in seafood have to compete with these rivals." While he was not opposed to Seafish being funded by a levy, it should be remembered that it was the industry, not the taxpayer, which footed the bill.
Martyn Boyers, chief executive of Grimsby Fish Dock Enterprises, said that while he was glad Seafish would continue, the body should include something that would benefit the Grimsby industry, pointing out that the newly refurbished fish market handled over £40-million worth of Icelandic fish alone.
Chris Sparkes, co-chairman of the Grimsby Fish Merchants association, also made a strong please for the small and medium processing enterprises to have a fair representation on one of the proposed new panels
Should people be 'stimulated' to eat white fish alternatives to cod?
