Picture this: you are out shopping in the company of your smartphone or android, and you spot some tempting tuna, or cod or hake. The price looks good, but you are an ethical Irish Times reader. So, naturally, you want to know more.
Thanks to a new project currently being developed by two State agencies, you should be able to use a phone or tablet app to scan the barcode, link in to relevant websites and find out where the fish was caught, how, by whom and when.
What’s more, the same links should even suggest some useful recipes, and give suitably impressive details on the sustainability of the stock.
The E-Locate project, as it is called, is a joint Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM)/Sea Fisheries Development Agency (SFPA) initiative which promises to give a 21st century level of traceability to the 21st century consumer.
Labelling regulations
Funded by the European Commission, it has been devised in response to yet more EU legislation on weighing, labelling and traceability of fish – a “positive approach” to something potentially onerous, in the words of BIM’s fisheries development managerMichael Keatinge.
It will have particular benefits for fish-lovers who are keen to buy catch caught by Irish boats in these waters.
“Irish fish” has been something of a misnomer since the State became a member of the EU, and signed up to shared waters under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
Current labelling regulations make it almost impossible for the seafood industry to identify wild fish, caught in shared European waters, as distinctly Irish.
“North-east Atlantic” is about as close a location permitted on retail fish stalls for most species, except for farmed salmon which can be described by nationality.
It’s one of the reasons that the Responsible Irish Fish (RIF) label was initiated byFrank Fleming and fellow catchers four years ago.
Supported by both BIM and Bord Bia, the label guarantees that the fish is not undersized and has been caught in a sustainable way.
More than 100 Irish vessels and all four main fishing co-operatives have signed up to the RIF label, and it has resulted in a small increase in price for catches, Fleming says.
‘Five times the price’
However, some 75 per cent of seafood sold here is imported, due to restrictions on Irish whitefish quotas, while better prices abroad have resulted in some 75 per cent of catches here being shipped away.
“It’s a crazy situation, especially when we have second largest sea area in the EU,” Irish Fish Producers’ Organisation (IFPO) chief executive, Francis O’Donnell says.
“We have had to live with small quotas, but this is not translating into higher prices for the primary producer,” he says. “It’s very difficult to explain why some fresh fish is being sold for five times the price that was paid at point of landing.”
A spot check which the IFPO conducted last week found that monkfish which had fetched €4 a kilo on landing was retailing at €31 a kilo in a Cork supermarket.