Give the Co-op credit!

Given their much loved presence in Newlyn as suppliers of grub for many of the boats over the years, Through the Gaps asked the Co-operative for their position on discards and sustainably sourced fish in the light of last weeks Channel 4 campaign. They came back with a very positive response:

Thank you for your enquiry following the recent television programmes on the Fish Fight.

The Co-operative, which applies its unique Responsible Fish Sourcing Policy to all its own-brand fish, including canned and frozen, and all own-brand products containing fish, such as sandwiches, is supporting the campaign to reform the Common Fisheries Policy.  At present, half of all fish caught in the North Sea is being discarded because of the current quota system imposed by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
We are already working to reduce discards by supporting the Cumbria Discard Reduction Programme, an innovative project co-ordinated by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS). This project brings together scientists and fishermen to develop solutions to reduce fishery discards. The Co-operative is co-funding the project which will work with the Cumbrian nephrops (scampi) fishery to reduce discards in the Irish Sea in 2011. A similar CEFAS project, Project 50%, has already been very successful in reducing discards of the Devon beam-trawl fishery, with discard rates falling by more than 52%. Both 50 % and the Cumbrian project were commissioned and funded by Defra,
In December 2010, we committed to sourcing 100 per cent of our own-brand canned tuna from fisheries employing the sustainable pole and line fishing method by the end of 2013. Pole and line fishing is a selective way of catching tuna without the bycatch issues associated with other catch methods, and therefore has the potential to be the most environmentally and socially-sound method of fishing tuna.
In 2008, The Co-operative established a £200,000 fund to help UK fisheries complete the Marine Stewardship Council certification process to support a sustainable UK fishing industry. The first of these to receive MSC certification was the North Menai Strait mussel fishery, in November 2010. With support from The Co-operative, nine fisheries are currently under full MSC assessment, and the entire Sussex inshore fishery (including 26 separate fisheries) has completed the MSC pre-assessment, whilst one further fishery is undergoing pre-assessment.
The Co-operative tops the latest Marine Conservation Society (MCS), a UK charity dedicated to the protection of seas, shores and wildlife, league table of supermarkets for supporting and selling sustainably-sourced fish. Additionally, we are the only retailer to have eliminated all fish from the MCS Good Fish Guide’s “fish to avoid” list, and have the largest percentage of sales from the MCS’s “fish to eat” list.

I hope this goes someway to assuring you of our commitment to this cause.

Yours sincerely

Rosemary Moss