The NFFO has hit back as reports of a study concluding that trawling is a major source of carbon emissions, accusing the mainstream media of trotting outdiscredited claims about the carbon emissions of fishing fleets and accusing the academics and NGOs behind these claims of wilfully construing that fuel duty rates are subsidies.
The study by a group of US-based researchers has already been splashed across news pages around the world, including The Guardian (never averse to a running bad news story when it comes to fisheries), the New Scientist and National Geographic. While the New Scientist clearly did some work in reporting on this latest set of claims and spoke to some experts to obtain a balanced set of viewpoints, other media clearly aren’t interested in both sides of a debate.
This comes only a couple of months after a similar set of claims published in Nature was debunked.
This latest study numbers among its researchers some of the same people as those responsible for the previous claim that the emissions generated by trawling are on a par with the global airline industry.
‘There always seem to be some in academia and charity sector who find that they can make a good living pulling in grants and donations by attacking fishermen. Perhaps it is because a working class industry, largely composed of small businesses, doesn’t have the money or the connections to play them at their own game. Whatever the reason, a newspaper is again trotting out discredited claims about the carbon emissions of fishing fleets and a handful of academics and NGOs are pretending that fuel duty rates are subsidies,’ an NFFO representative commented.
‘Let’s be clear: there are many different rates of tax on fuel and they vary according to the type of fuel and its user. That is not the same thing as a subsidy.’
‘It’s not as though fishermen don’t already pay plenty: they pay for their licences; they pay for vessel inspections; they pay for medical certificates and mandatory training courses – and much more besides. These ivory tower commentators would like fishermen to pay even more tax. By the same logic, perhaps they would like farmers to be taxed more for fuel as well. Then when no one in Britain can afford to produce our food any more, we can just import it all. I wonder what that will do for the nation’s carbon footprint?,’ the NFFO asks.
‘Maybe we should give up on food altogether and just eat grant applications?’
