Comeback cod?

Cod is heading where the oyster went.

Brits still get through 100,000 tonnes of their most familiar fish a year, but stocks are so depleted that this can’t go on. Now a Shetland aquaculture company is pushing farmed cod as a premium product instead - under the catchy slogan ‘No Catch’. After some high profile exposure in prestigious restaurants, Johnson Seafarms is now selling 100% organic pre-packaged fresh fillets to ‘luxury retailers and fine supermarkets nationwide’. We’re talking about farmed fish here, but company chairman Laurent Viguié insists they’re “reared in a highly sophisticated, pristine, environmentally sensitive, sustainable environment”, untainted by dyes, pesticides or chemicals. What’s more, their feed won’t deplete ocean resources either - they get off-cuts of fish already harvested for human consumption. The expected ‘No Catch’ harvest is a bit more than a drop in the ocean at 2,000 tonnes this year, rising to 10,000 tonnes with time.

22 May 2006