Scotland''s only full member of the European Parliament''s powerful Agriculture Committee, Mr Alyn Smith has pledged to defeat new European laws regarding the treatment of diseased fish caught at sea.
The new proposed rules would see skippers obliged to bring suspected diseased fish to shore for incineration as potentially hazardous waste; while the EU's Common Fisheries Policy obliges the same skipper to throw perfectly healthy fish overboard, if caught over quota.
The proposals are contained in the new proposed Animal By-Products Regulation which proposes to bring diseased fish within its scope, where currently the fish, if suspected of disease, are simply thrown back into the sea. The new Regulation is currently under consideration in the European Parliament, and Mr Smith is the draftsman of the Opinion for the Agriculture Committee. He has pledged to delete diseased fish from the scope of the Regulation and called on other MEPs to support his case.
Mr Smith said:
"The new Regulation is in the main a very welcome proposal, it will be good news for farmers and vets, help biofuels and I'm delighted the Commission is coming in the SNP's direction. But the proposal to extend the scope to fisheries is neither logical nor workable, and if the Commission will not withdraw it then it must be defeated.
"I understand the logic, in that, hypothetically, if fish caught are suspected of disease then throwing diseased fish back into the sea could run the risk of the disease spreading, so the fish should be quarantined and destroyed safely. But any hypothetical positive impact on marine disease control will be negligible compared to the massive financial and practical burdens on the already struggling fishing industry.
"The Commission claim that this is only designed to apply to factory vessels which freeze fish on board, yet the wording of the legislation is not clear. It would be difficult for fishing vessels in general to simply ignore the regulation, especially considering that the supposed health risk comes from the gut of the fish, and most fishing vessels gut fish. It is also clear that that there would be major costs for fishing vessels if they had to demonstrate the ability to comply. Ports would also be burdened by the cost of having to transfer the waste to an approved plant, which may be huge distances away.
"The Sea Fish Industry Authority is clear that there are no actual disease risks involved in merely dumping the diseased fish back in to the sea. Fish diseases and parasites are natural in the marine environment, and "are no risk to human health"; returning infected fish to the sea is also hardly likely to increase infection in the fish population. The requirement would also be extremely difficult to enforce, and the storage of diseased fish on board also leaves fishing vessels open to violation of food hygiene laws.
"As Draftsman for the Agriculture Committee on the Animal By-Products Regulation, I will be deleting diseased fish from the scope of the Regulation, and I will fight to push this through the Committee vote. I will also be holding discussions with Horst Schnellhardt, the Rapporteur for this Regulation in the Environment Committee, and will seek to ensure that identical proposals are contained in the final Report. We have a very good opportunity to defeat this."
