It is fitting to mark World Food Day, which falls tomorrow, with a warning last year from its sponsor, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, about the over exploitation of fish resources: "The international community must now deal with the fundamental contradiction between the reality that ocean resources are finite and the prevailing impulse to exploit them as much as possible in the short term".
These words hang over the impasse which marked yesterday's Council of Fisheries Ministers. They serve to remind us that behind the typical mix of science and political bluster that characterises such negotiations there lies a stark reality of dwindling fish stocks. For all the criticism her proposals attracted yesterday from the formidable ranks of fishing ministers and officials the Commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, deserves to be congratulated for dramatising this issue for a wider public. It is a global problem, we have been increasingly reminded, as Spanish ships are arrested off the Canadian coast in search of turbot and Japanese ships off Ireland in search of tuna. But the pressure is most intense at regional level - nowhere more so than in the Atlantic waters covered by the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy.
The elements of an eventual compromise hove into view yesterday as the Commission hinted that an average 15 per cent not 40 per cent, cut in catch quotas spread over six years could meet the scientific requirements suggested in conservationist research, on condition that "effort reduction" - days at sea and size of nets is achieved. Clear distinctions must also be made between the most endangered species such as cod, haddock, mackerel and sardines and others such as ray, lemon sole, flounder and dab which are often fished together with them. Many of the national delegations made special pleas for local and regional communities which are especially vulnerable to quota cuts. There were complaints of lack of consultation, sketchy data and unacceptable scientific methodologies.
This is all grist to the mill of fishing negotiations and may be more or less valid. But it should not be allowed to obscure the fundamental truth highlighted by the Commission in advance of this meeting. In order to avoid the catastrophes that would come from continuing to exploit ocean resources for short term gain it will be necessary to regulate them much more tightly and to think more creatively about how best to preserve and develop fish stocks and fishing systems. For all the advances in technology and expertise this is still overwhelmingly a hunting industry, with wild species as its targets. Fish farming of salt water species, other than salmon and sea trout and one or two others, is very underdeveloped in Europe.
Conservation could therefore most usefully go hand in hand with the development of alternative farming and ranching methods for appropriate species. Some of the technology for this has in fact been pioneered in Irish Atlantic waters, a fact that has been obscured by controversy over standards of physical and environmental management in salmon and trout farms. More EU funds could usefully be devoted to this means of developing the fishing industry, thereby preserving employment, as well as to restricting the impulse to exploit the wild resources of the sea for short term gain.