Former Fisheries Minister Michael Jack MP chaired the Parliamentary Committee and received the evidence from the NFFO. The EFRA (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) Committee is investigating Britain’s ability to feed itself in the future against the background of growing word population and potential political and environmental interruptions to supply.
Commenting on NFFO’s evidence the Committee had raised several questions. Criticised broad brush reports from various quasi-academic and environmental groups that gave the impression that all fish stocks were in a state of collapse. It has been argued that the full potential of the stocks in Community waters had not been realised under the CFP and that the top-down prescriptive approach that had characterised the CFP to date was largely responsible for this under-performance.
It is noticed that aquaculture certainly had an important role to play in the future food supply but that outside mussel cultivation, a major expansion of sea based aquaculture faced important constraints because of conflict with inshore fishing; pollution around the cages; escapees damaging the genetic pool of wild stocks and dependence on the capture of 4kgs of wild fish to grow 1kg of farmed fish.
The concept of maximum sustainable yield has been discussed, its strengths and limitations and the ability of the current science regime to provide accurate information on stocks was also taken into consideration. The evidence emphasised that moving in the right direction on fish stocks was more useful than arcane and often pointless discussions about destination and targets. The Chairman indicated that the Committee might wish to revisit the Common Fisheries Policy as part of its future work programme.
