Hugh’s Fish Fight keeps on growing

Hugh’s Fish Fight – the EFTTA-backed campaign to ban fish discards – is growing momentum across Europe.

The initiative, which was started in the UK by the television celebrity chef, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, has now spread to Germany and Poland.

The campaign calls for European fisheries ministers to ban discards – the practice of returning perfectly edible dead or dying fish back into the sea – when it decides on reforms to its Common Fisheries Policy later this year.

Fearnley-Whittingstall set up the Hugh’s Fish Fight campaign and encouraged people in the UK to sign a petition calling for an end to discards. To date, nearly 800,000 have done so with 135,000 tweets sent to European fisheries ministers on the eve of a crucial meeting earlier this year.

Now German chef Tim Mälzer has joined forces and started an equivalent campaign¬ which he launched in front of the German Parliament building in May. He was followed by television personality and Polish cuisine promoter, Robert Maklowicz ,with his Ryba Za Burta! (Fish Overboard!) website. He also chose his country’s Parliament building to launch the campaign.