EU agreement on fish discards 'scandal'
THE British Government has hailed an EU agreement to introduce a blanket ban on dumping dead fish back in the sea.
Speaking from Brussels after marathon talks, fisheries minister Richard Benyon said: “This is a historic moment in reforming the broken Common Fisheries Policy.
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“The scandal of discards has gone on for too long and I'm delighted that the UK has taken such a central role in securing this agreement.
“I am disappointed that some of the measures required to put this ban into place are no longer as ambitious as I had hoped but it is a price I am willing to accept if it means we can get the other details right.
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“The final package will still need to be agreed with the EU Parliament but the result we have achieved is another step in the right direction and will prove to be good for both fishermen and the marine environment.”
Earlier this month, as reported, MEPs overwhelmingly backed the biggest-ever Common Fisheries Policy reforms, crucially including an end to so-called “discards” - a consequence of current CFP quota rules restricting the size of landed catches.
The issue galvanised wide UK support when chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched a Discards Campaign which has so far attracted more than 850,000 signatures on a petition condemning the throwing away of perfectly edible fish to avoid breaching limits.
EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki – who once admitted the CFP was “broken” – said the discards system means almost one quarter of all fish caught in European waters is being dumped at sea.
Biggest resistance to fisheries reforms on the scale demanded by MEPs came from France, Portugal and Spain.
The agreement will see the discarding of edible fish banned for stocks like herring and whiting from January 2014. A ban for white fish stocks was also agreed, to begin in January 2016.
The UK also claimed to have successfully fought off attempts to include a modification in the new Common Fisheries Policy for quota swapping that would have allowed other countries access to UK quotas.
2 Comments
by plumduff10
Thursday, February 28 2013, 4:13PM
“OK -Call me thick but if you catch fish in your net that the EU says you can't sell (due to size or quota) what can you do with the if the EU says you can't put them back?”
by TheWrangler
Thursday, February 28 2013, 11:59AM
“"THE British Government has hailed an EU agreement to introduce a blanket ban on dumping dead fish back in the sea."
....as a success?, as a disappointment?
Grammar, the difference between knowing your s##t and knowing you're s##t!”