I AM scunnered when I hear comments from the likes of Andrew Charles of the Scottish Seafood Association ("Fishermen facing bill of £34m after Brexit", The Herald, October 16).
The hand-wringing about the fish and shellfish industry having additional costs and tariffs after Brexit to supply produce to the EU is nauseating. Mallaig is one of the busiest fishing ports in western Europe, which is agreeably fabulous for the Scottish economy; however, the agencies need to stop automatically loading fleets of container lorries every day to drive thousands of miles back and forth to Paris and Madrid markets. More than 90 per cent of our beautiful shellfish is sent daily to Europe basically because these countries have overfished their own bereft waters. As a lover of shellfish I skip along to our feeble supermarkets to get offered bags of manky frozen prawns and shellfish from farms in Vietnam, Indonesia, Honduras, and the Philippines and from questionable quality of seawater. Let’s do a simple maths test and work out what is wrong with this picture both economically and ecologically.
I would happily pay an extra £1 or two to get my hands on our wonderful Scottish produce shipped from about 90 miles away from my town and this will not require paperwork, additional tariffs, drivers’ wages nor thousands of litres of heavy diesel fuel and associated emissions. If the national supply chain was improved and increased we could perhaps get better quality Scottish products cheaper than importing from the other side of the planet. Crikey, we could even get a small modern fleet of refrigerated boats to bring the seafood to Glasgow and Edinburgh from the north and keep our roads free for the increased tourism coming for our scenery and fresh seafood.
The Scottish seafood agencies and associations need to take this opportunity to redefine the markets, negotiate with the UK shops and supermarkets and offer them the chance to sell our native fish to a local and frustrated customer base – they actually might make more money by doing so.
Allan Bone, Peebles.
I HAD to laugh when I read your article headed on fishermen's complaints.
My recollection is that the fishing industry supported Brexit in 2016 and was happy about leaving.
I could never understand why an industry that exports most of its produce, and the majority of its most valuable catch to Europe, should vote to leave and expect business as usual. Its home market is not a big fish consuming customer (witness how few fish shops are on the high street). I bet they also believed we would have £350 million a week to put into the NHS and that the tooth fairy really exists. And now they want their own dedicated fisheries minister. Yet another Brexit cost.
Sorry gents, but you get zero sympathy from me.
Robert Currie, Helensburgh.
EIGHTY per cent of marine litter starts life on land – that is the harsh reality that we need to confront as individuals, communities and as a nation. If we are serious about tackling the damage being done daily to our marine environment, in Scotland and beyond, we all must play our part in changing behaviour and stopping litter's journey from source to sea.
That is why Keep Scotland Beautiful welcomes the news that action is to be taken on the Forth and in other river basins across the UK ("Rivers ‘must be cleared’ to stop flood of plastic into oceans", The Herald, October 16). As we have found over the last year through our charity’s award-winning Upstream Battle Campaign in the Clyde Valley, the problems caused by our reckless relationship with litter are pervasive and widespread.
However, we have also been encouraged by the significant contribution made through our campaign by community groups, businesses and public bodies, undertaking clean-ups and gathering evidence to support our call for action to tackling this issue. In one week in September alone more than 3,000 people engaged with the campaign and more than 400 bags of rubbish were removed from sites up and down the Clyde.
We wish the project on the Forth every success and look forward to sharing the lessons we have learned over the last year with them and working collaboratively to stop marine litter.
Catherine Gee, Operations Director, Keep Scotland Beautiful, Stirling.
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