With dishes such as roast halibut increasingly popular on menus, Direct Seafoods is encouraging its customers to use farmed fish sourced from Scotland and Norway, and has pledged to only offer the farmed variety to them.
Direct Seafoods, which brings together 10 hospitality-focused regional fish businesses from Devon to Scotland under a national brand within the Bidfresh group, supplies chefs in restaurants, hotels, pubs and other hospitality sectors.
It has invested in putting sustainability at the heart of its approach, with a specialist team led by Laky Zervudachi, director of sustainability. He said: “Halibut is an extremely slow growing species and is considered endangered. There is growing concern at the lack of co-ordinated and consistent management plans to rebuild stocks across the North Atlantic.
“This is particularly concerning as the true status is unknown, meaning that fishing continues to deplete potentially unsustainable stocks. We sometimes hear the excuse that Norwegian halibut is a by-catch species, but most halibut landed in Norway is from targeted longlines which, however well managed, are still targeting an endangered species.
“Direct Seafoods is clear that we won’t sell wild halibut until a truly demonstrable well-managed fishery is in place. The USA and Canada have proved that it is possible, and the Pacific halibut fishery has been MSC-certified for many years. In the meantime, we’re urging chefs to avoid supporting the trade in endangered species and only put farmed halibut on menus.”