Greta Thunberg’s generation provides an opportunity for fish as food to thrive with its sustainability credentials, 海角视频 Seafood Summit has heard.
With a carbon footprint rivalling a vegan diet, Generation Z can warm to the sector as a staple diet feature – providing businesses are aligned to the environmental and social campaigns now actively championed.
With an over-arching theme covering ‘the responsible seafood economy’ in 2019, keynote speaker Winus Sloot, marketing and sales director for emerging Dutch brand Fish Tales, set the tone.
Launching his address with a remix of Fat Boy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now track featuring 16-year-old Swede Greta’s passionate UN address, he said: “There is so much going on with the consumer. We see what is happening on a daily basis, people are going on the streets, millions of millions of people, are demanding change. It is not local, it is word-wide, spread around the globe, and more and more people are doing it.”
As Kiffness’ mash-up played out at Forest Pines Hotel with more than 200 delegates looking on, Mr Sloot said: “While Donald Trump was bashing Greta Thunberg’s speech, millions of people are listening, dancing and celebrating her words.
“This is happening with this generation, so it is not going to go away. It is here to stay, and transparency is what they are demanding. What is speeding up this whole process is the way consumers are influenced, and it is unprecedented how we have knowledge of things going on in the industry.”
The rise of social media and non-government organisations, was underlined, so too the risk to those who don’t just engage but lead. He showed a trailer of NetFlix programme Rotten the ‘lies they feed us’ shock-umentary.
“Entire categories, companies and brands are exposed and at risk of being neglected by consumers,” he said, reading posts on well-known names in food that were featured for practices seen as shameful by the new buyers – or avoiders – of their products.
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“We just didn’t know about it in the old days,” Mr Sloot said. “The current generation going through this, is soon to be making the decisions and demanding things need to be unconsciously good.
“They don’t even want to think about if it is transparent, it needs to be right. We are not there yet but the flow is speeding up. The generation behind the speeding up, Generation Z, is a generation of social and environmental change-makers, willing to act, go on the street, collaborate with like-minded people worldwide, and sustainability and equality is really important. They are not allowing our choices as consumers to have a negative effect at the beginning of the chain.
“That has an impact on business models, and business models should be built now on environmental and social responsibility. There’s no other way. Research shows consumers are willing to pay for it, so there is a business case for it.”
Mr Sloot is part of the headline-grabbing business that works with responsible fishing communities and encourages its customers, retailers and chefs to explore the world of fish. It was launched by one of Jamie Oliver’s “food heroes” Bart van Olphen, in Amsterdam five years ago.
He told how hiding from ethical operations or ‘greenwashing’ - pretending to care or act - will be quickly found out, and even reactive measures are no longer enough.
“Top companies and brands now are operating with full transparency, operating from purpose– ‘why we are doing this now,’ ‘because we are on this planet’, ‘why we exist’, and they are active and making decisions not responding to change but making that change.”
Max Mossler, managing editor and co-founder of , works closely with Dr Ray Hilborn at the University of Washington, writing science explainers and curriculum, while also reporting on current events in marine conservation and sustainability.
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He told how for seafood, science and new perspectives will be beneficial to make the sustainability argument and talk about sustainability to consumers.
“Science is the most trusted institution from where people get information from,” he said. “We have to have bullet proof data that backs this up.”
Laky Zervudachi, director of sustainability at foodservice specialist Direct Seafoods, said Greta had done a great job for the seafood industry.
“Greta has done an amazing thing, a big wake-up to people’s consciences. She does seem a little bit trained, but she is very, very motivated. We need to be able to push that story, and having something like that come along actually helps us to get the message across.”
He told how it was a tough job when dealing with chefs from independent pub and restaurants to huge corporate catering outlets.
“Some chefs have a green bent, but a lot of chefs don’t consider sustainability - they say they do but it is all about cost, they want the cheapest fish,” he said. “Others, top restaurants, just want the best quality fish. We need to help change these attitudes.
“In retail, seven or eight people are driving the message down, we have hundreds and hundreds of customers and we have to drive it from the bottom. Getting that through is a big challenge.
“The last two or three years has seen a real shift from talking about stuff to actually doing stuff, and for me that’s quite gratifying. Generation Z, my children, those in their 20s and early 30s, want to make a difference.”
So why is seafood so well placed? The last word was left to seafood sustainability ‘veteran’ Mike Mitchell, who would love to be starting his amazing Grimsby-anchored but internationally active career all over again, such is his enthusiasm.
The former director of Young’s Seafood was speaking in his role as fisheries advisor for Marks and Spencer, but also serves as president of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain and a board member of Seafish.
He said: “I am coming up to 40 years in the industry, I started in 1980, and if I could do another 40 years I would, it is wonderful. We have made fantastic progress. Our industry is a complex sector operating in complex times, but we have a good reputation in the 海角视频, we have done a lot of work.
“We have a healthy pre-competitive space where we can align around core issues and have proactive engagement from many actors in food service and retail. M&S is at the leading edge of that. We have a well-defined rule book for responsible sourcing, we have documented what we do, it is written up, and we have a strong basis for making decisions. We have strong academic and institutional support and we work well with non-government organisations, they see us as agents of change in the marketplace.
“I have been working virtually full time in sustainability since 2005, it correlates with the Greenpeace report Recipe for Disaster. It was a challenge at the time, a wake-up call, but it was the truth, and we responded positively.
“We have a good track record and it is based on effort. We have done the hard yards, we have had a number of green seafood movements in the 海角视频, led by retail and encompassing leaders in the food service sector. Most now employ corporate social responsibility professionals.
“We have had a growth of third party certification. The MSC is just over 20 years old, there is a new industry for third party independent assurance for aquaculture and wild catch fishing. This is all new – the last 15 to 20 years.”
Referencing Mr Mossler’s presentation, Mr Mitchell said: “We have very robust tools to improve fisheries. It is great to hear about fact-based myth busting, we have a lot of facts and a lot of issues we are dealing with are myths.
“People are really thinking at the leading edge of these issues and taking our industry forward. We need greater-than-ever levels of insight, engagement, innovation and collaboration.”
For each element he flagged up examples, with horizon scanning of trends and public concerns; the work on the Seafood 2040 “real live work stream looking at very real issues we face preventing the English seafood economy developing and growing” with Defra and industry; work with Fisheries Innovation Scotland on new methods for catching and the Sustainable Seafood Coalition on sourcing decisions all outlined.
He added: “We need to continue to think of the solutions we have, is it not finished, it is not a completed journey. We need to continue to keep evolving. For the businesses, it is beyond compliance, we shouldn’t be about box ticking. That was the early days. All you do is select the best. Then we had fishery improvement projects, part of the ‘reject the worst, select the best, improve the rest’ model.
“The voice of industry, when combined, is an agency of change when it comes to trying to affect improvements. If we work together, continue to evolve and think about how we stuff, and don’t rely on the thing we have done already and expect what we have done already to work in the future in a typically fast-changing situation, we can continue to make a difference.”
Will Greta grace Grimsby for fish and chips or salmon and cous cous? We’ll wait and see.
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