Should we be supporting the EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki on phasing out the discarding of fish?

Question

On Monday (Tomorrow, March 19th 2012) The Council of Ministers will decide whether to back the plan by the EU Fisheries Commissioner to phase out the practice whereby trawlers which have exceeded their quotas throw dead fish back into the sea.

The television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is urging people to bombard the Twitter accounts of EU fisheries ministers this weekend in the countdown to this crucial meeting in Brussels to ban the practice as being ''unrealistic and too prescriptive''. ''Wasting prime fish on this scale is absolutely unacceptable'', says the TV Chef.

Answer 1

I read an article about this in a UK newspaper. The people supporting Hugh is reaching close to a milion people across Europe who are backing his campaign further at his website http://www.fishfight.net/.



The website states that Hugh discoevered that half the fish caught in the North Sea are being thrown back into the sea, dead, because of crazy EU laws. As a result he launched his campaign called 'Hugh's Fish Fight!' in an attempt to change those laws. You can aslo follow 'Hugh's Fish Fight' on http://www.facebook.com/hughsfishfight and http://twitter.com/#!/hughsfishfight



I'm in agreement that we should support this campaign to the max. It could be the difference between a long-term sustainable fisheries or more yearsw of pointless EU wastage. They already waste our money, don't let them waste our food supply too!

Answer 2

Everyone in Cornwall is supporting this. An absolute stupid law whereby prefectly good fish are thrown away because some plonker in a foreign country thinks it will save fish stocks.

Have you been watching Monty Halls on BBC2 on Tuesdays, it covers this.

Answer 3

How this ruling ever got off the ground, is unbelievable. Whoever gave this ruling air time was obviously mentally retarded. Its sickening to think of the fish which had to be returned dead because of this EU Directive. Now we have to support this and get it over turned rather rapidly, because its morally wrong to discard food in this way and punish fishermen from doing what they know best.

Answer 4

So one of the lunatics running the EU has finally had some common sense? There is hope for us yet.

Answer 5

Yes.