Buying “Local Seafood� Figures

[Gad]

While browsing through a group of unread Fishing World email newsletter articles I happened across the following 2 related articles that may be of interest to some?

taken from FW email newsletter

Environment: The "local fish" debate

10 Jul 2015

By John Newbery

THE Professional Fishermen’s Association (PFA) has mounted a facebook campaign aimed at encouraging seafood consumers to support their local NSW fishermen. It poses the question “Why buy local?†and then provides some answers: local is fresh, local is sustainable, local creates employment, and then encourages readers to “taste the local in your seafood.â€

It’s not really a new pitch but again raises some fundamental questions, firstly about the types of seafood that Australians choose to consume and, secondly about what drives their choices.

Taste, quality and price were for a long time the primary determinants of what sold best, but in the last few years a fair chunk of the fish-buying public has become aware that all fish are not equal, that is that some are harvested or grown sustainably and some aren’t.

Groups such as the Marine Stewardship Council (founded jointly by the World Wildlife Fund and the Unilever corporation) can take initial credit for educating the public about sustainable fishing methods and product. Major food retailers have joined in on this and recently there have been mainstream TV programs devoted to sustainable seafood and accurate labelling.

But we still export 80 per cent of the seafood we harvest and import 70 per cent of what we consume. Why? Because despite our self-image as a nation of seafood lovers, other than at Christmas and Easter average Aussies don’t buy a lot of seafood by world standards, and if they do they don’t want to pay the prices that a lot of our top end product commands on international markets.

So it’s the old global economy at work. We can buy perfectly tasty fish from New Zealand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Africa at a much lower price than we are asked to pay for our local product. At the average fresh fish market, fillets of farmed Nile perch sell for about a third the price of local wild caught or farmed barra, and when cooked are pretty well indistinguishable. Take away fish shops sell plenty of battered blue grenadier, and that might be from New Zealand rather than locally caught, as might be the snapper fillet alternative.

Does it really matter?

Well, it does to the fishermen themselves who want to preserve their jobs and lifestyles. But to the rest of Australia, it might be a bit like the Holden / Ford dilemma: we like the idea of a local car industry and the jobs it provides, but we’ve taken to buying imported cars in preference if we like their quality or price or appearance better. And how many local reel manufacturers are left here? Or sport shoe makers? Shimano and Nike rule these days.

So while wishing the PFA luck with its latest campaign, I’m not hugely optimistic on its behalf. “Fresh†in the era of jet transport takes on a whole new meaning, when in transport time terms South East Asia is as close to Sydney as Yamba. And “sustainable†production is now virtually an export requirement for seafood eaten here.

But of course if you want guaranteed fresh, sustainable local fish to eat, become a recreational fisher!

John Newbery is Fishing World magazine's environment editor.

Comments

Patrick XXXX

John - ABARES Australian Fisheries Statistics has Australian exports at 35,000 tonnes and the total wild commercial catch as 157,000 tonnes. That is about 78% of the Australia catch by weight is consumed in Australia. The reason I say about is that some of the export species are processed before being exported. Not sure where you obtained the 80% number for exports unless you are referring to value of exports.

John Newbery

Thanks Patrick. I've been quoting these 70/80 import/export figures

since my aquaculture industry development days when someone

used them on me in support of industry expansion. As you point

out, ABARE figures show 80% is the approximate value of

exported catch (SBTs, crays, abalone, prawns, live reef fish

and value-added product etc) not the tonnage percentage. I'll

do some homework for a more thorough analysis for my next

piece.

[Gad]

Follow on from above article

Environment News: More on local fish

28 Aug 2015

By John Newbery

PATRICK'S comments on the last column sent me scurrying onto the website and ABARE’s Australian Fisheries and Aquaculture Statistics 2013, and of course he’s right. While we export 49 per cent of our seafood by value, that’s only 22 per cent of the combined tonnage of Australian wild catch and aquaculture product.

The Statistics are full of quite fascinating information, if you don’t mind wading through the pages of tables. The total wild caught tonnage was 157,252 tonnes. Aquaculture contributed another 80,066. We exported 35,304 of edible product. We imported 388,894 tonnes. Historically, we were a net importer in volume terms and a net exporter in value terms. In 2012/13, we also became a net importer in value terms.

Our main export markets were a little surprising. In order, Hong Kong ($371m), Vietnam ($294m), Japan ($289), China ($48m), USA ($39m). But we only account for 0.2 per cent of global seafood supply, which makes us, as ABARE puts it, a “minor player.â€

The report also has a section on recreational fishing, although on page 42 it says you don’t need a NSW rec fishing licence if you’re over 60. Wish it was so, but in reality the exemption is only for pensioners.

But back to the locally caught fish issue. When NSW created its Recreational Fishing Havens, the industry ran an unsuccessful “right to eat local fish†campaign. When aquaculture revved up a decade or so ago, it was suggested that “locally caught†was superior to “locally grownâ€, despite Hiramasa kingfish and Crystal Bay prawns winning taste tests against locally caught equivalents. Does it really matter if granny’s snapper comes from NSW, SA or NZ, given the speed at which seafood can be safely moved around the globe… as long, of course, it has the appropriate heath and sustainability certifications? The sale of granny’s snapper will still contribute to somebody in Australia’s employment and mortgage payment, even if that “somebody†wasn’t involved in the fish’s capture.

Sure, it’s nice for people to have the choice of buying sustainably harvested local seafood as well as imports, but is it all that important, particularly as most of our tuna, billfish, prawn and rock lobster harvest effort is export focused anyway? And, back to the original question, is the “buy local†campaign still particularly relevant in 2015, or would a more sophisticated niche based marketing approach (like for sustainably certified Coorong yellow eye mullet) be better?

[RIPIP]

The problem with buying local seafood is that you have to go out of your way to actually find it, if it was more readily available and your average consumer were informed that their local fishnchip shop is selling imported shite then local fisheries would be supported much more. This old post from ausfish sums up a typical experience looking for local seafood http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/archive/index.php/t-80182.html

Our labeling laws in this country don't help the local industry and allow shops to mislead consumers with fish naming, e.g. any cooked fish can be named "barramundi" or "cod" when in reality the fish is catfish that has been imported from south east Asia.

Better labeling laws can lead to consumers being informed what they are buying is not local and thus more shops will be forced to sell local or risk being viewed as sub-par.

[Gad]

quote from your link….{If I had had the time and a brain I would have driven to Aussie Seafoods at Capalaba who are the only ones I know of on the Bayside where some decent stuff can be bought.}

so, the guy decided he wanted seafood at the last moment and he knew where to go for exactly what he wanted, but didn`t…. can not see what his whinge was about.