Examination of Witness (Questions 420-426)
Mr Cliff Morrison
30 APRIL 2008
Q420 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Are DG Fish/Mare interested? If they really support it and put
some money behind it, it would alleviate them more.
Mr Morrison: Yes. The work that the Americans
have done up in the North West has been absolutely great. We have
got the salmon certified; we have got the Alaska pollock; we have
got Pacific cod, and a couple of other local species as well.
There is a huge amount of fish available there. I have been a
great advocate of the MSC back from 1996. I have been on various
of their committees and, at the moment, I am on the technical
advisory board and also chair their chain of custody group within
that. However, there was a great reluctance in the European fisheries
to begin with, and certainly there was massive reluctance in Scotland.
Some of my fishing colleagues used to say, "How could you
ever be involved in something like this?" Now they have changed
totally and they are very much looking towards certification.
There has therefore been a whole culture change, which is very
encouraging. If we go back a little while, however, there was
a lobby group of the Norway and Iceland governments who were opposed
to the whole concept. They were saying, "Who are the MSC
to come in and tell us how to manage our fisheries?"—and
to some extent that also applied here. The MSC, of course, are
not trying to manage fisheries; what the MSC is doing is looking
at the process. With any certification system you cannot actually
tell a company or the fishery how to manage. If a fishery, or
for that matter an ISO 9000 process that is in application, is
found to be wanting, all you can do is say, "These are the
areas that need attention" and then it is up to the organisation
to decide whether they want to progress with it or not. Iceland
and Norway talked about developing their own eco-label and then
they tried to influence Brussels to develop an eco-label. I recall
going to Iceland a few years ago with the then chief executive
of Young's and the chief executive of Birds Eye. The fisheries
minister at the time, Arni Mathieson, said "We want our own
government label" and the response from my CEO was, "If
you think I'm ever going to put a government label onto one of
my private patch, you've got to be kidding!"—which
I think was a bit of a surprise to him. However, I think that
in Iceland they are still interested in developing their own label.
In Norway, that position has now changed, because there are a
number of certifications ongoing in Norway at this moment.
Q421 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
In terms of the EU—bear in mind that we are an EU committee—it
sounds to me as though the answer is no, they are not interested.
Mr Morrison: I am sorry, I am rambling a bit!
Was it two years ago that the European Parliament accused the
Commission of not moving fast enough on eco-labelling? The Commission
therefore came up with three proposals for consultation. One was
to do nothing on certification. The second was to develop an EU
eco-label, following the Icelandic position. The third was to
develop a standard to which certifying bodies would comply. As
the processing industry, we went very much in favour of the latter,
i.e. develop a standard to which others comply. The parallel
to this, of course, is the organic approach, where there is an
organic directive that certifiers have to comply with. This is
where I would hope that the EU will eventually come to. What the
Commission did do was to set up a working party to look at how
to go forward, a technical group, and I was on that. It proved
to be very difficult in this group, because the fisher interests
on the group wanted not only to include sustainability but also
the ILO—the international labour laws—as well. They
wanted to include ethical aspects, which would have gone all the
way into secondary processing. They said that our factories in
China should also be included, and I objected totally to this.
We agreed the international labour laws should be taken into account
on board vessels, but I drew the line at that. They said that
I was appalling, that I was terrible—which is quite interesting!
However, in terms of secondary processors in China, as far as
I am aware all the companies, all our members, have ethical audits—in
China, Vietnam or wherever—so all of those aspects are covered.
My concern about drawing these aspects into an eco-label would
be that we would dilute the sustainability aspects of it. I therefore
opposed that. The EU had representation at the FAO when the FAO
developed their eco-labelling guidelines. My view is that we already
have an established set of guidelines in place, approved by the
FAO, so the EU should simply adopt those and get cracking with
it. What we are now finding is that there are a number of certification
bodies coming forward who are claiming to be able to certify fisheries.
There is one organisation that simply does a desktop analysis
and says, "Yes, that fishery is okay". If you look at
that against the requirements of the FAO standard, which are very
detailed and require a huge amount of research and follow-through—and
the MSC is the only organisation that complies with the FAO at
this time—in my opinion, the sooner the EU does something
(and only on Option 3, because we would not want the other options)
so that we do not get a proliferation of lower-level certifications,
the better.
Q422 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
My question follows on from that. You talked a bit about the industry
wanting long-term sustainability, but to what extent are consumers
demanding sustainability? Is it just industry-led or is there
a genuine demand from consumers? I suppose that you have half-answered
this. How do they know what they should buy and what they should
not buy, given the different, complex messages they are getting?
Mr Morrison: It is incredibly complex. My view
is that the consumer is confused about the issues. I was looking
at some surveys and, in the autumn of 2007, Seafish undertook
a survey quantifying consumer attitudes towards sustainability.
The results of that were that 19% of the general population would
look for information about sustainable seafood and then change
their buying habits and behaviour; 38% were worried by the "no
fish in 2048" campaign. You will probably recall that there
was a scientific paper, I think it was about 18 months ago, saying
that if we continued fishing the way we are there would be no
fish left in 2048, and people were very concerned about that.
Then 57% sought reassurance from the pack that the fish was not
at risk. That is what came out of the Seafish study. Young's have
recently undertaken consumer research and, in a survey of 1,100
consumers, 95% of them expressed concern about fish sustainability;
52% were saying that it was a very important issue; and 31% were
claiming to have changed their eating habits over fears of fish
sustainability. There is definitely a growing awareness now and
that is good, because it is no longer just the corporates and
it is no longer the investors: it is the consumers that are taking
an interest as well.
Q423 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
The only independent indication that anybody has in their shopping
at the moment that something is sustainable is the Marine Stewardship
Council; that is all they have.
Mr Morrison: Yes.
Q424 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Young's could write what they like on the pack but it is not independently
verified, is it?
Mr Morrison: Some of what they would do would
certainly be third-party certified; but I agree that that is the
only way at the moment. Of course, it does come down to brand
integrity as well. Consumers do have confidence particularly in
the retailers and they assume, because it is a complex issue,
that the retailers or the bigger brands will take this issue responsibly.
I think that, if ever they found that a brand was not taking it
responsibly, that is when they would take action about not buying.
That would be my view on it.
Q425 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. That was an aspect of the industry that was absolutely
fascinating.
Mr Morrison: There was one part that I did not
cover. Do you have five minutes?
Q426 Chairman: Yes, we will give
you five minutes.
Mr Morrison: You asked about, and we went slightly
away from it, how we ensured legality. I have mentioned the issues
about IUU in the Barents Sea and, at the time, that was estimated
to be 160,000 tonnes of IUU cod. We clearly had to do something
about that. All of our members have buying policies that look
for preferred suppliers; that audit the chain, et cetera. However,
as AIPCE, we felt that we had to devise a common approach. We
therefore developed what we called our "poachers' control
document" for the Barents Sea. We brought all our key buyers
together from across Europe and looked at the key aspects, to
ensure that we would be able to buy responsibly and we put this
into a control document. We consulted with DG Fish and with Defra
on this, and also with WWF Europe, which gave it their tick—which
was very good. We instituted this, not as a stand-alone but to
be drawn into all of our members' purchasing systems. We also
included letters of warranty. Many of the aspects that are now
in the NEAFC Port State Control system that came in on 1 May last
year were actually in our document. We have therefore considered
that to be a huge success. Last week, at the Brussels Seafood
Show, WWF International had a gathering at which we had the Russian
ministry, the Norwegian deputy fisheries minister, Mr Fotiadis,
DG at DG Mare, together with our own AIPCE president, and WWF
congratulated us all for the work that we had done in trying to
control the Barents Sea. The estimate for last year was that the
IUU cod was down to 40,000 tonnes. I believe that it is less than
that, much less, but that is the Norwegian estimate. We believe
that with our control document we have played a very important
part. We then moved on last year and produced a control document
for the Baltic Sea. Although that is for cod as well and all around
this 40% IUU, the Baltic is really quite different. The Baltic
is a fresh fishery; the Barents Sea is a frozen fishery. We therefore
had to produce a quite different risk-assessed document. We believe
that is being successful as well. We now need to look at the other
areas that we will progress with. I mentioned the tuna. As FDF,
we are now in the process of developing a similar risk document
for flown-in tuna. We are also working with Seafish to develop
an audit protocol, to look at the whole system—again risk-based.
We hope to get something out on that over this coming year. It
was interesting that both the DfID and Defra ministers also mentioned
this last night. This links back into the legislation that I was
talking about. It is much better to do it on a fishery-by-fishery,
risk-based system.
Chairman: Thank you very much again.
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