Cod and chips is off the menu - here's what to get instead |
In the UK, we love cod. It makes up the bulk of the 167 million servings of fish and chips we get through a year. But a stark warning that cod stocks are dangerously, historically low is a signal that if we want any in the future, we have to change our ways – right now.
The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has, for the first time, taken all cod caught in UK waters off the menu of its Good Fish Guide – the country’s definitive guide to which fish can and can’t be sustainably eaten.
It recommends that Brits “completely avoid” eating any UK-caught cod this year to give the exceedingly low stocks a chance to recover. Most UK-caught haddock, meanwhile, can be sustainably eaten, the guide says.
The MCS recommendation takes in all cod from the Northern Shelf – an area also known as the UK Continental Shelf – which covers the English Channel, the North Sea up to Norway and the west of Scotland.
And the decline in fish numbers they have seen is highly concerning – particularly in the southern region of the North Sea. It has seen stocks dive by 61 per cent over the past decade, according to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), a body made........