July 2001

1. FISHMEAL BAN WILL DEVASTATE PROCESSING SECTOR

The Scottish Executive must intervene without delay to seek an urgent opt-out for Scotland from the ban on fishmeal in ruminant feeds. The news that Margaret Beckett, the new Department of Environment Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA or 'DEATHROW' as Private Eye magazine calls it!) Minister, has now agreed to implement the extended EU ban on fishmeal in ruminant diets, is of great concern to the beleaguered fishing Industry. The ban will have a serious impact on the Scottish fish processing sector which is already reeling from a savage economic downturn due to the recent cod closures in the North Sea and a severe shortage of fish. I have written to Scotland's Rural Affairs Minister Ross Finnie urging him to seek a derogation from this ban for Scotland otherwise the fish processing sector will be faced with inevitable job losses and increased costs which will simply be passed down the line to our hard-pressed farmers.

It's also worth remembering that around 30% of raw fish material goes directly to the fishmeal trade and therefore represents the difference between profit and loss for many primary fish producers. This ban will have an appalling impact right across the board. The ban was first imposed by the EU Council of Farm Ministers as a panic reaction to the spread of BSE on the continent. The original mistake by the Council of Ministers was to allow fishmeal to be classified as an animal protein when it is, in fact, a marine protein. It is quite obvious to most people that fishmeal is a natural product, supplying invaluable sources of oils, vitamins and proteins. It has been widely used in animal diets for many years and is particularly useful as a feed additive for pregnant ewes and all classes of dairy and beef cattle. Six million tonnes of fishmeal is used every year world-wide, with around 250,000 tonnes going into UK feeds under a carefully managed and strictly controlled conservation regime.

There has never been the slightest suggestion of links between fishmeal and BSE or CJD. Fishmeal manufacturers who use fishmeal and who already have the most stringent controls in place, will now have to dedicate specific plants to producing feedingstuffs only for ruminants, where all fishmeal has been banned, while other plants will separately be required for pig and poultry feed production, where fishmeal is still allowed. This will lead to massive increases in plant, transport and handling costs and could be the last straw for many struggling businesses.

2. NEED FOR STRICT CONTROLS ON INDUSTRIAL FISHING

I have called on the European Commission to impose stringent controls on industrial fishing in the North Sea in an effort to aid cod recovery plans. As everyone knows, fish stocks have collapsed in the North Sea, forcing the European Commission to introduce emergency measures for the first time, recently closing over 40,000 square miles to all cod fishing for 12 weeks and now imposing strict emergency measures to protect dwindling stocks of Northern Hake. And yet despite these stringent controls, industrial fishing for sandeels and Norway Pout is being allowed to continue unhindered. This kind of fishing is completely incompatible with the development of a sustainable fishery and with the recovery of fish stocks in the North Sea.

While our fishermen are being forced to fish with large 120 mm mesh nets for cod, haddock and whiting, the huge industrial klondykers, mostly from Denmark and other Scandinavian nations, hoover up everything they come across using tiny mesh nets. This sort of destructive fishing not only leads to hundreds of tons of whitefish being scooped up as a by-catch by the klondykers, but also removes vast quantities of sandeel which is a basic component of a cod's diet. It is ludicrous that the total allowable catch for sandeels has now been extended to over one million tonnes a year. This can only have a devastating impact on the biomass and the entire ecological balance in the North Sea. I therefore called on Fisheries Commissioner Franz Fischler to introduce strict controls on industrial fishing as part of the reform package for the Common Fisheries Policy.

Struan Stevenson is a Conservative Member of the European Parliament for Scotland. He is Front-Bench Spokesman in the European Parliament on Scottish Rural Affairs and Deputy Front Bench Spokesman on UK Agriculture. He is also Front Bench Spokesman on UK Fisheries and is a Member of the EU Delegation for Relations with the People's Republic of China.