Consuming issue: Salmon Business recently highlighted that a new report from Seafish has identified that UK fish and seafood consumption has declined by 22% since 2006. This decline has accelerated to 30% post COVID.
Seafish’s new report ‘Fish as Food’ confirms that consumption of fish and seafood remains at one portion a week compared with 15 portions for meat and chicken.
The report considers the various challenges to fish and seafood consumption in the years ahead suggesting that seafood may struggle under tough conditions in the next five years. However, the report suggests that there are windows of opportunity to boost fish and seafood consumption.
However, regardless of what windows of opportunity exist Seafish abrogated themselves of responsibility for marketing fish and seafood in the UK some years ago. Instead, Seafish are more interested in aspects of fishing such as the fleet survey. Yet, the size of the fishing fleet is irrelevant if consumers are not buying the fish and seafood they land. In my opinion, marketing is by far the most important aspect of fish and seafood consumption, and it is one that has almost no investment.
Despite the fact that Seafish are no longer consumer facing, they see the following as potential opportunities for the sector.
- Efforts should be made to ‘foreground’ the great taste of seafood to consumers – this is something I have been saying for over twenty years. From my perspective getting consumers to eat some if not more fish and seafood must be about the fact it tastes good. That is a message I rarely hear.
- Seafood formats may need to be reinvented to match the needs of key consumers – When I became involved in marketing, salmon producers used to hold up a whole fish and expected consumers to get excited. Now you rarely see a whole fish being sold. Consumer’s demands have changed, and this has involved the production of a diverse range of products. This product development is an ongoing part of a long-established process rather than being a window of opportunity now.
- Health has been a relatively neglected aspect of seafood yet is a major opportunity – I would argue that this is incorrect. Health used to be heavily promoted as a reason for buying fish and seafood but failed because it was only attractive to those consumers who health was an issue. The lowest seafood consumption is by the younger age groups and eating for health is generally not an issue for them.
- Seafood’s position in the market will be strengthened if it is promoted as a high-quality protein that is value for money. However, consumers who don’t eat fish and seafood or eat it rarely are not that interested in whether it is high quality although price is clearly important. Like health, quality is not a main driver as long as the quality is what the consumer expects.
- Trust in seafood will be enhanced by greater consistency in the supply chains – I suggest again that consistency is not important to consumers as they are not consistently buying the products.
The reality is that consumers choose to buy fish based on firstly whether it looks good when displayed in store and then whether it is a price that is affordable. Finally, they hope that when it is cooked it tastes really good. After that, other issues such as whether it is fresh or previously frozen, which country it is from, whether it is wild or farmed, are all minor issues.
The challenge is to find ways to persuade potential consumers who rarely or never eat fish to start to do so and to realise what a tasty meal choice fish and seafood can be. In the past, Seafish found this challenge too great and pulled out of marketing altogether,
From 2006, fish and seafood consumption fell into decline. The reasons are complex but probably have most to do with the way that consumers buy food, then preferring conveniency to cooking from basic food ingredients. It has not helped that the range of fish and seafood has also reduced in many stores offering consumers less, not more choice.
Consumption patterns changed with Covid and initially, there was a big jump in consumption (or at least purchase). Whilst Seafish look at all offerings of fish and sea food including fresh and chilled, ambient and frozen, I have preferred to just look at fresh chilled. Following the initial jump in sales, there has been a gradual decline every month until the end of 2023. The total decline in fresh chilled from peak Covid to now has been only 18% not the 30% that Seafish report for all fish sales. However, as the following graph shows consumption initially stabilised but in recent months has shown some growth.
I have yet to analyse the data to understand what is causing this change in fresh chilled fish and seafood consumption but it is clear that the decline has been halted. I suspect that one aspect of this about turn is a wider availability of promotional offers but this is not yet certain. When I have time, I will try to determine what is driving this change and will report back on any findings.
Finger initiative: Seafood Source report about a new initiative organised by the University of Plymouth. This is the ‘Plymouth Fish Finger’ which is part of the national FoodSEqual project led by the University of Reading, which aims to improve access to food that is healthy, affordable and sustainable for local people.
Research has shown that consumers want to eat more fish, or at least they say they want to eat more fish but there are barriers in their way. The Initiative intended to get local people involved in the design of a new ‘Plymouth fish finger’ as a way of tackling some of the issues.
The finished fish finger was launched in July as part of a new consumer facing brand and campaign – Seafood Plymouth, who say fish fingers are a great way to familiarise people with fish they don’t normally eat in this case a blend of dogfish and pouting, both of which are processed for extra freshness and to ensure a fair income for local fishermen.
Currently, the fish fingers are made by hand which is time consuming so the finished product will be sent out to just one school.
This is an interesting project but one likely to fail, or at least expand outside the very small area in which it operates. Fish fingers are currently promoted from the cheapest minced fish finger to premium varieties. They are all effectively the same thing which is a crumb or battered coasting over a fish block, which could be made from a mix of different white fish to premium cod or haddock. Because the ratio of crumb to fish is around 40%:60% the individual flavour of the fish is masked by the crumb or batter It really doesn’t matter what fish are used in the production process. If the crumb is made from cheaper inferior ingredients, it will be more noticeable than if the fish is cheaper as current preferences of the fish come down to the marketing activities of the producers.
However, the choice of dogfish and pouting is surprising since dogfish is not considered the best sustainable choice by the Marine Conservation Society. Even pouting is not the best choice.
My view is that the fish and its origin is of least importance. If the aim is to get more fish into schools etc, then a special fish finger isn’t the answer. What is required is a more open-minded approach to fish in school meals but in addition it is not the school kids who need to be convinced about eating fish, but rather their parents. School is the first stop, but it is breaking into a wider base of home consumption that is really required.
Salmon in a box 2: In the last issue of reLAKSation, I referred to someone on social media who said she had popped into a local store to buy a pack of salmon fillets but was mortified to have to ask for them to be unlocked from a security box.
By coincidence, the Sunday Times has written about the increasing problem of theft of meat and fish from supermarkets. They say it used to be booze and batteries but now it is steak and sea bass.
What is different now is that the theft of meat and fish is not just random shoplifting but is increasingly organised to supply local independent restaurants. The newspaper cites the example of a couple from Hampshire who over five days stole the following:
From Marks & Spencer
13 joints of meat
7 packs of smoked haddock fillets
5 packs of sea bass fillets
3 packs of kippers.
8 packs of trout
16 packs of salmon fillets
3 packs of cod fillets
From Sainsburys
2 beef joints
2 half legs of lamb
2 lamb shoulders
2 packs of salmon fillets
1 pack of sausages
1 beef steak
9 joints of meat (unspecified)
In total, the value was £842. The couple were given community orders by the court.
The supermarkets are now fitting GPS trackers to some products in order to track where they end up and have found that much is ending up in restaurants, sometimes stolen to order.
The Times says that the price of meat and fish has rocketed in recent years as shown in the following graph and this has fuelled the theft of these products.
They also say that there are elements of modern-day slavery in the way that these items are stolen. People with addictions are given accommodation in return for stealing. This is like in Charles Dickens’ Victorian times when Fagan forces children to pickpocket for him in return for shelter as detailed in his famous book Oliver Twist.
In another example, local thieves ran a stall in a pub with stolen meat and fish displayed on a table and sold to drinkers.
Salmon is clearly not just popular with consumers but also with thieves. It used to be poaching from the local river but now its proving easier to raid the local supermarket. Security boxes for salmon may increasingly become part of the normal shopping experience for many of us in the years ahead.