R2OK!

Rachel · Guest

Did anyone else rush to the kitchen last night to check where their Tuna was from and how it was caught? Bad Mr TESCO- oh dear.

I was so pleased to discover ( not that I'd ever bothered to check- Tuna is Tuna, right? Wrong!) that our Tuna is pole and line caught in exactly the place Hugh was last night. yay!

PS: The EU fish policy is stupid.

RockitRon · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 7646

Tesco - no surprise. Princes supplies Asda - no surprise there either.

Sainsbury's tuna has been pole-and-line for some years. Unfortunately my last purchase was John West, and the tins are suspiciously silent on the subject; and only the Best Before date stamp contains any clue as to where it comes from - Ghana.

Stupid is a kind word for EU fish policy.
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Ron

Rachel · Guest

TESCO and ASDA go on and on about price but don't tell you all the ugly details of just why they are less expensive.

Jeans do not cost £3- someone somewhere is suffering or being cheated to make that possible.

What annoyed me most was the "discard" highlighted on the first show, where perfectly good fish was dumped because the fishermen had reached their quota of some species- it's crazy!!! People are starving out there and we're throwing food away.

RockitRon · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 7646

It's criminal. I didn't see this programme, but the practice has been highlighted many times before, and I think of it, with some anger, every time I hand over a tenner in the chip shop on a Thursday evening and get an ever-dwindling amount of change back.

The fish are all dead when they get thrown back, so are of no interest to most other sea life - does anything else eat them?
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Ron

ruddlescat · Joined: 16 Sep 2010 Posts: 18010 Location: Near Chester

I agree with everything which has been said but just wanted to give good old Hugh a big pat on the back

He has done a great deal to bring to the attention of the general public lots of food issues ranging from the quality and history of supermarket chickens to sustainable methods of fishing and how to avoid wasting food by making full use of every food item and he deserves a lot of credit

He inspired me to get involved in organic gardening and I together with others am now involved in the running of a totally organic vegetable garden at a small village called Glyn Ceriog between Wrexham and Oswestry

Funnily enough Michael Portillo commented on the wonderful scenery there on Tuesday in his current series of train journeys on BBC 2
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Rachel · Guest

It’s a trickier problem than it first appears. The quotas were brought in to prevent over-fishing of certain types of fish. It doesn’t work cos those fish get caught anyway and then discarded back into the sea – dead (Crab food), once the quota has been reached. The fishermen want to have limited days at sea but to land everything that they catch ie- no discard. (cue Clarkson) BUT, what they don’t say is: actually they wouldn’t do that. They would fish for the expensive fish: Cod and Haddock and discard the rest until their boats were full of Cod and Haddock- then land that- what would be the point of landing cheap fish? So it’s quite circular.

What Hugh is trying to do is to make other fish as popular as Cod and Haddock – so we (the consumers) want to eat all fish, not just Cod and Haddock. That way, the price of other fish would rise with the demand and everyone would be happy…yay! Well…… apart from the fish whom get very little say in the matter but it serves em right for tasting so good!

Rachel · Guest

Thanks to Hugh, TESCO are changing the labels on their "Dolphin Friendly" Tuna and say they will switch to pole and line caught by the end of 2012. Tesco are quite like Fish- they don't like it when they are caught.

RockitRon · Joined: 07 Dec 2006 Posts: 7646

That's quite a long timescale. I hope there's some left by then.

I caught a little bit of Hugh on last night's One Show, encouraging us to switch from cod and haddock to coley and pollock (or Colin, as Sainsbury's tried to call it).

My grandma used to feed coley to her cat, so that puts me off a little. Pollock I've tried and it's OK but lacks something.
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Ron

Gnasty Gnome · Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 313 Location: West Wales

The one that I find off-putting is "Vietnamese River Cobbler"; I've seen pictures of what the Vietnamese sling in their rivers and it don't tempt me towards eating anything that's been swimming there!

Tried smoked coley; it's what Kwik-Save smoked haddock would be like if Kwik-Save still existed. Cheap and nasty.

Rachel · Guest

That River Cobbler stuff is sometimes called "Basa" I wouldn't knowingly buy it.

undiscovered · Joined: 15 Sep 2010 Posts: 650 Location: Peterborough

To be honest I can't remember the last time I had Cod not even in the chippy, the Haddock os from sustainable sources (chip shop and not that often) but at home we never even have haddock
Yes we have the river cobbler but Mackerel and Bass are the main ones we eat and we do have fish at least once a week. We have Tuna in the cupboard but we don't have it that often.
I have a friend who is a Marine Biologist so he's been banging on at us for years and it has got in.
Sea Bass although expensinve is the finest fish in the sea imo
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ColinB · Guest

Angela W · Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 7202 Location: North Yorkshire

ruddlescat · Joined: 16 Sep 2010 Posts: 18010 Location: Near Chester

They are indeed confused Angela, they are obviously talking Pollocks Shocked

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Angela W · Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 7202 Location: North Yorkshire