Political indecisssions illustrate their imcompetence.
The Baltic herring has always been an integral part of the food culture in all these neighbouring countries for centuries so the wellbeing of the Baltic herring is extremely important and is monitored closely by many interested parties the EU, the national interested parties, international fishing and environmental groups, fisheries and wildlife departments here and all of the nine neighbouring countries, here in Sweden it has been a hot political potato over the past decade, here in Sweden seems to has become a football with all political parties having a kick and then they all leave it out in the rain.
In Stockholm, we have seen a huge price increase in Baltic Herring elevating it from the absolute cheapest fish to standard fish price. Also, the availability of the Baltic Herring has diminished from being a standard folk fare to almost a rarity “I’ll take the Baltic herrings, never know when I’ll get another chance”. There are many factors that have bought about this change, but the main culprit is overfishing. The usual candidates are seals, cormorants, pollution, the environment etc and of course overfishing.
There have and are still many impacts being felt by overfishing this single act has resulted in the disappearance of local fishermen from the many traditional fishing villages that dot the Baltic which in turn means there’s fewer fresh fish available in the smaller towns and throughout the country, they lose their jobs and their lifestyle. Related traditional seafood companies and industries can’t survive, and must close, more jobs disappear. The ecological fauna balance of the Baltic is disrupted as the food chain is put under pressure, the decline of a great food fish disappears from our menus, their disappearance is another nail in the coffin for the integral Swedish food tradition and culture. These results have been broadcasted and proclaimed on out news bulletins these past years; I assume it’s the same in other neighbouring countries as well.
The overfishing is carried out by large trawlers taking their quote from the sliver of international waters running along the no-man’s-land of the central Baltic. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if we saw this catch in our supermarkets, but we don’t of course. The fish meal industry is driving this exploitation. Fish pellets for the fish farms predominantly the salmon industry, most of this fish meal is then formed into pellets using animal gelatine making the Salmon in turn inedible for the growing masses that shy away from meat or Muslims. Funny they don’t declare this information on their supermarket labels.
These big time fish feed companies are of coures exporting their produce, so they are depleting /destroying one enviroment for their own gains and the farmed salmon are destroying the area they are farmed in, killing two birds with one stone. This is a win win for them, buy shares now.
Well, what a travesty, who is allowing this or letting it happen, Sweden like our neighbouring countries have over the past years changed governments a number of times, so it really can’t be the current or past government or their parties politics, it must be just all of them!
Each neighbouring country has an environmental party or green party but obviously the plight of the Baltic herring contra fish pellets it’s not so important. Sitting in the halls of power and playing the game seems to be more important than this environmental challenge, for me all these environment parties have failed. Our Swedish minister claimed recently it was an EU issue and that all the effected countries needed to ban together to change EU legislation. What a crock of S…..
I believe its greed and extremely weak decision making by weak politicians who ignore the insight into making the correct decision, it’s too easy for them to pass the buck and hide behind big business and international pressure.
That’s my interpretation of the current plight of the Baltic Herring.