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Experts: demand for ‘greener fish’ is unrealistic

KOCHI: The demand is for ‘greener fish.’ Environment-friendly and sustainably-harvested fish is what retailers and consumers are demanding in the United States. If the trend catches up, it may force seafood industries in developing countries, including India, to adapt to the new and taxing demands.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has indicated that the “need for seafood producers to guarantee environmental performance is unavoidable.” The producers may have to “assure retailers and consumers that their fish were not taken from overexploited stocks, farmed in ponds where mangroves once stood, or caught in nets without turtle-saving excluder devices installed, ” says a FAO communication.

Several major seafood retailers have already committed to putting on their shelves only fish that was harvested or raised sustainably, says FAO.

K. Devadasan, director of the Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT), feels that the suggested restrictions amount to economic blackmailing by the buyer nations.

The seafood exporting countries and developing nations should form an organisation on the lines of OPEC. The proposals amounted to non-trade barriers like some of the unrealistic and impractical quality guidelines proposed earlier, Dr. Devadasan said.

The buyer nations often introduce such measures when they want to reject or reduce the price of consignments and the sellers should resist such moves, he said.

B. Madhusoodana Kurup, adviser to the State Fisheries Minister, says that environment-friendly guidelines are new forms of indirect trade barriers introduced under the pretext of conservation measures.

If these guidelines were introduced, countries like India would be hit hard. It would not be easy to certify that the catch is not from over-exploited stock. In developing countries, most of the export varieties are either on the verge of being over-exploited or really over-exploited. In case of Turtle Extrusion Device (TED), the turtle population is found only in some coastal pockets of India. So a blanket proposal to that extent may not be reasonable in the Indian context, he said.

Prof. Kurup felt that the proposal to ensure that fish are not farmed in ponds where mangroves once stood was a reasonable one and would help conservation of the mangroves. If these restrictions were imposed, it would affect the export and economy of the country, he said.

According to M.K. Mukundan, Head of the Quality Assurance and Management Division of the CIFT, there was a veiled threat of blocking the export in the proposals. If the restrictions regarding the mangroves were to be introduced, it should be introduced only after fixing a cut-off date for the same. TED could be introduced only for fishes caught from turtle nesting sites, Dr. Mukundan said.

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