Genoa. «Ensuring traceability means knowing the origin: when we buy fish, how clear is this data? Then: to ensure freshness it is necessary to indicate the date of fishing, and why is there no such requirement for fish?
Finally, environmental sustainability passes through the fishing gear – because if I buy a cuttlefish caught from a small local producer’s pot or from an ocean trawler, I am somehow eating two different products, and therefore I should know – but how can I find out about it? The current Italian reality lies in these three words: you don’t know.
What we eat is, before being a consumer good or a basic necessity, a commodity: this implies that it is subject – in the vast majority of cases – to transport, auctions and sales; said in one word: trade. Now, food security is a concept that can be divided into two aspects: Food Security and Food Safety: while the first is an economic-social concept that aims to guarantee all inhabitants of the planet access to a quantity of sufficient food to live on, the second refers to the qualitative aspect of the agri-food product. This means that Europe and politics as such take the responsibility of following – so to speak – the path of each product from its harvesting or capture to the consumers’ tables. But is it really like that?
Among the sectors that today require greater transparency in the supply chain there is certainly that of fishing. In fact, over the years, we are witnessing an increasing exploitation of certain fish stocks, followed by an impoverishment of their natural habitats. To guarantee the protection of aquatic ecosystems, the European Union has for years been pursuing a policy based on the sustainability of fishing. The intention is good, but in practice what is missing from this system? First of all, clear tracing of the supply chain, which currently disappears once the fish has reached the fishmonger’s counters or restaurant menus.
Let’s explain better: when a professional fisherman goes out to sea and catches a fish, he is obliged by law to carry out a series of steps that guarantee the traceability of his work. For this, he fills in the logbook with all the capture data (specific name, coordinates, date, area, etc.); each catch of the day is then given a transport document on which all this data is reported. DDT follows the fish throughout its commercial journey, only to then magically disappear when the fish appears on the retail and large-scale distribution counters. Why?”.
«When the fish arrives on land, its traceability cannot be found on the labels of the fishmongers or on the restaurant menus: the fishing date is lost, and this happens because the law gives no obligation in this regard», explains Daniela Borriello, Head of Coldiretti ImpresaPesca.
Added to the problem of the date is that of origin: «Here there is a legal obligation – confirms Borriello – The problem is that, once again, transparency is lost to the detriment of codes that consumers rarely know. The world’s fishing areas have been divided into FAO zones. These are then followed by subzones. For example, 26 is the North Sea, 29 is the Pacific, 37 is the Mediterranean. If the Tyrrhenian Sea falls in subzone 37.1, the Adriatic is in 37.2. But the question here is: does the average consumer know this?
Currently, what we see on most labels is a series of numbers that indicate an area of origin but – if not accompanied by a specific illustrative table, in short a legend – they mean little.
Gianluca Boeri and Bruno Rivarossa, President of Coldiretti Liguria and Confederal Delegate, comment: «These shortcomings in practice do not guarantee that real value is given to a product based on its freshness, sustainability and provenance from a short supply chain. The consumer is not aware of what he is purchasing, and as if that were not enough, the remuneration to the producer is not proportionate to his work which, if carried out with a view to sustainable fishing, should be highlighted.”
Borriello continues: «A loss of data and information of this magnitude favors the capitalist mechanisms of large-scale distribution, destroying the work of small local producers. On the contrary, therefore, what we are asking for on this day is 100% transparent labelling, so that the traceability work carried out by fishermen since the capture of the species can arrive directly on the tables of Italians, without getting lost in the meanders of a sea of murky legislation”.
Today 7 June 2024, the theme of this anniversary is: “Food Safety: prepare for unexpected”. Let’s make sure this title turns into something that we can not only predict, but that it is our right to demand.
