European fishmeal producers reject unsustainably caught blue whiting

European fishmeal and fish oil producers will no longer buy blue whiting caught without documented sustainable practices for meal used in salmon feed, KVF reports. The decision follows the blue whiting stock losing sustainable fishery certification next month.

Odd Eliasen, managing director of Havsbrún, a fishmeal and feed factory in Fuglafjørður, said the European producers were taking the step because the fishery would no longer be approved as sustainable by certification bodies such as MSC, ASC and Marine Trust.

Eliasen has just ended his term as chairman of EFFOP, the European association for fishmeal and fish oil producers. He said the stock is approaching what fisheries scientists call the B limit, the lowest level at which sustainable fishing is considered possible. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea usually recommends stopping fishing when a stock falls below that limit.

The certification is important to salmon-feed producers because certification for farmed salmon and products made from it depends on the entire value chain being sustainable, including the feed.

Large feed producers in Norway and Scotland have refused to buy fishmeal for feed production over the past four to five years unless the underlying fishery could be documented as sustainable. Havsbrún has followed the same policy, and all European fishmeal producers belonging to EFFOP are now adopting it.

According to Eliasen, the problem is not the condition of the blue whiting stock itself but the lack of agreement among the coastal states.