Get ready for Seafood Week
PREPARATIONS are well under way for Seafood Week, a nationwide celebration designed to get consumers to eat more fish.
The national event – from October 9-16 – seeks to highlight the abundance of delicious, fresh seafood on offer across the UK.
Organised by Seafish, the industry authority, it aims to get the British public excited about experimenting with seafood at home and exploring new tastes when they visit restaurants or takeaways.
Richard Corrigan, chef and owner of Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill in Piccadilly and Corrigan’s Mayfair, has given Seafood Week his backing.
‘It’s great to see that we’re becoming more and more interested in seafood and the variety we have throughout the year. Home cooks are more confident experimenting with various recipes in the kitchen and we need to encourage this enthusiasm.
‘Seafood Week is a great initiative, we’re an island with amazing produce and we should be making the most of our beautiful seafood.’ MARKS & Spencer is going to need 60,000 young recruits into its seafood, food and agriculture sector over the next few years, the World Seafood Congress was told last month.
A shortage of skills was one of the challenges currently facing the company, Hannah MacIntyre, M&S fisheries and aquaculture manager, informed her Grimsby audience.
It was why the company had set out a training programme for young people so it had the sort of skills that would become necessary for the future.
As an example, she said the retailer was taking a group of people from a Scottish salmon farm to Pinney’s of Scotland, the salmon smoker and seafood processor that supplies M&S, so they could see for themselves how what they provided was produced.
‘We will show them how the work at (fish) farming level impacts on matters like quality,’ she said.
MacIntyre said fish was a hot topic at the moment, but often for the wrong reasons. M&S was increasing its training programmes to ensure it had the skills needed for a sustainable future.
‘Our focus is through technology and special skills working with fishermen and fish farmers. We need to continue upskilling for a transparent future, working with research and development departments and universities.’
The food outlets, including fish, now accounted for just over half (£5.2 billion) of the M&S total annual gross revenue of £10.3 billion.
In fact, at 14 per cent, M&S has a proportionately much higher share of the UK seafood market than any other major retailer.
‘We offer quality, convenience, trust and a fantastic choice,’ she said.
She explained how in 2007 the company launched an initiative called Plan A because of concerns over sustainability, climate change and the environment – and this very much included seafood.
‘Plan A changed the way we do business. We included four core values – inspiration, the way we do business, innovation and integrity, with integrity being the most important of the four.’
She said much of the focus was on ensuring ethical trading and promoting the health benefits that go with eating fish.
‘Our customers expected us to behave responsibly and with issues such as climate change and population growth there are huge pressures on the world.’
She added that following the ‘horsegate’ scandal three years ago (where horse DNA was found in beef burgers) customers were demanding transparency. M&S responded to this demand by ensuring it knew every ingredient it was putting into its (food) products.
The company was not only talking to farmers, fishery and forestry experts, but was also drawing on knowledge from universities and research centres.
Following MacIntyre’s address, Richard Watson from Seafish gave an insight into fish consumption and future shopping trends.
And the stark reality was that the British consumer was eating far less fish now than at the height of the Second World War when U-boats were a constant threat to the fishing fleets.
He said average consumption in 1940 was 300g per person per week, compared to just under 150g today. Perhaps this was due to the fact that fish, unlike meat, was one of the few foodstuffs not subject to rationing.
Compared to poultry, red meat and other proteins, fish was an expensive choice today.
‘The savvy shopper is here to stay. Price is their number one priority, followed by quality and value for money.
‘We are also seeing a change in the way people shop. The big shop appears to be in decline, with people making more frequent visits with smaller baskets.’
Watson predicted that much of the main growth in fish consumption would come through the food service sector, and with the expansion in ethnic restaurants and in street food, all of which provided great opportunities for seafood.
If wages rose and the price of fish stayed more or less the same, he said perhaps fish would make a gradual return to being the number one protein in Britain.