What can policy makers do?

As a policy maker - at local, regional or national level - you probably have a crucial role to play in helping your local area become a Sustainable Fish City. Fixing the fish problem can't happen by voluntary consumer or commercial action alone. Help create the regulatory and market conditions to make Sustainable Fish City easy to achieve. Here are some ideas.

Local authorities

If you work for a local authority, you can influence large amounts of sustainable fish buying. To take action on sustainable fish, please consider:

• Running the Marine Stewardship Council Fish and Kids project with primary schools in the borough, which is free of charge
• Improving school meals with the Big Lottery funded Food for Life programme, which at Silver award level means excluding endangered fish (this requirement moved to Bronze award level from the beginning of 2012).
• Achieving Marine Stewardship Chain of Custody certification for food bought by the Borough and at least some of your publicly funded institutions
• Letting us know about the actions you are taking so that we can help you celebrate this, and inspire others to join in, email: fish@sustainweb.org
   

If you would like to consider adopting a policy, or need help with catering contract terms, please get in touch: fish@sustainweb.org

---

The UK Government

Government spends about £46 million every year on seafood. We are delighted to say that in June 2011, Central Government "put its own house in order" on sustainable fish by adopting the Sustainable Fish City standards into its catering specifications for fish served in Whitehall, Number 10, Government Departments, UK prisons and some parts of the armed forces. This accounts for about one third of all food served in the public sector in the UK, to 400,000 people a year. [read more...]

Now we need to make sure that all fish served in the public sector is covered by sustainability standards. Approximately another third of public spend on food is in schools, and the remaining third is made up of food served in hospitals, local authorities, state-run care homes and other public institutions. If you work on government, school or hospital policy, then we think you should:

• Make sustainable seafood mandatory for other public institutions that spend taxpayers' money on fish, such as schools, hospitals, care homes and local authorities, which at present have no mandatory sustainability rules at all.
   

Sustainable Fish City also supports the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, which is calling on government to introduce mandatory health and sustainability standards for hospital food and the Children's Food Campaign, calling on government to introduce mandatory health and sustainability standards for school food (both of which ask for robust sustainability standards for fish).
 

“Coming to London from Brussels I was informed that London has been challenged to become the first ever Sustainable Fish City. What a challenge. There is a clear message here and I have received it. We need a new European Fisheries Policy and we can have it!”
Maria Damanaki, EU Commissioner for Fisheries