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First farmed cod on the slab
7th April 2003
The Guardian
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Shetlands family counter dwindling stocks of wild cod with successful rearing of caged fish for the market
The first commercially farmed cod in Britain will be harvested tomorrow, heralding a revolution in fish farming which the producers hope will save the nation's traditional fish and chip supper.
With wild fish stocks continuing to fall worldwide, the race has been on to supply farmed cod, but the problems of breeding codlings have been formidable. A supermarket set up a cod breeding farm in the Western Isles but gave up after the tiny fish turned cannibal, drastically reducing numbers available for stocking farms.
Scientists have now discovered how to feed the tiny fish so that they do not eat each other, paving the way to successful farming.
The Shetland cod have been hatched, reared successfully, and grown on in former salmon cages by fish farmers anxious to diversify because the price for farmed salmon has crashed.
The first batch has been sold to the gourmet restaurant trade in the US, but as production builds up the Johnson family firm at Vidlin, in the Shetlands, is hoping to supply British restaurants and ultimately the nation's fish and chips shops. "This is obviously a big moment for us, and only the beginning of what we hope will be a large-scale business," said Ivor Johnson. "Obviously there is a massive market out there. It is no longer a question of whether we can produce the fish but whether we can keep the costs down enough to make a profit. It is looking good so far. We think we can."
The Johnson family were pioneers in what is now Shetland's massive salmon farming industry; their firm produces two million farmed salmon a year. But prices are so depressed, because of world overproduction, downward pressure on prices from supermarkets, and undercutting from Chile, that the family are making a loss on the salmon. They are already farming sea trout and mussels.
Cod is a mass-market fish where demand is outstripping supply, and the Johnson family bought their first batch of codlings two years ago "to get experience to go large scale early," said Mr Johnson.
The US batches being sold only weigh 100kg, allowing chefs to test the product. The Johnsons plan to start the main harvest of the first of 12,000 two-year-old, 2kg fish in September. The fish are part of a stock of 35,000 the family keeps, in various stages of development.
Mr Johnson said: "The American broker wanted to buy the entire first year's production but we were not happy with that idea. There is plenty of demand for farmed cod, so we are anxious for as many people to try it as possible because we believe it is better than the wild version.
"I know this will be contentious but wild fish often have worms and lie for up to 10 days in the bottom of a trawler. Our fish are worm free and very fresh."
So confident are the family of growing cod successfully they have ordered, for this year, 600,000 codlings - the entire output of the only cod hatchery in Scotland.
The codlings each weigh 30gm and cost a little more than a £1 apiece. Including the cost of feed and husbandry, the family will have spent £3.5m before they can expect to get back any money from sales when the cod reach 2kg in two years time. Angus Johnson, Ivor's brother, who helps run the family firm, said: "This is a significant amount of money, but if we can get ahead of the game it will be worth it. In the end, we hope we can replace wild stocks with farmed cod in restaurants, and even in fish and chips shops, without there ever being a break in supply."
The family will have to ramp up production quickly. With fishing for cod in the North sea severely restricted, the UK, at the moment, imports 85% of its cod from Iceland, Russia and other suppliers. Prices are steadily increasing as demand exceeds supply.
The amount of North sea spawning cod is said to be now between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes. But the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea says that 70,000 tonnes are needed to ensure survival of the species.
The council urged the EU to stop fishing altogether last year while stocks recovered, but ministers overuled this advice and decided fishing could continue, though with vastly reduced quotas. Many scientists now believe North sea cod could soon disappear.
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