Fierce protests over drift-netting led to Irish wild salmon being blackballed by the Slow Food movement, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Founded in Italy 20 years ago, Slow Food is an international association that promotes traditional food and wine culture against mass standardisation. With 83,000 members worldwide, it also seeks to protect cultural identities linked to gastronomic traditions and to defend wild animal and vegetable species.
So it was with some surprise that prominent members attending its second "Slow Fish" event in Genoa in November discovered that smoked Irish Atlantic salmon had been certified as a "slow food"; especially as the movement's mission statement pledges to protect "traditional foods at risk from extinction".
In a series of strongly worded letters to the association's president, Carlo Petrini, they complained that the Government "continues to issue salmon quotas 50 to 100 per cent above levels recommended by its own scientists even though the stocks are slowly disappearing", and called for the certification to be dropped.
Although it had been recommended as a "slow food" by a panel of Irish fish-smokers - Peter Dunn, Anthony Creswell, Sally Barnes and Frank Hederman - Mr Petrini said Slow Food had to accept the fact that there was a danger of extinction for the fish and would suspend certification as of 2006.
Orri Vigfusson, chairman of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund, warned that European salmon restoration efforts would remain at a standstill until the Irish net fishery was removed, saying the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea had warned the Government repeatedly that it must be brought to an end.
Recalling that he had tried to warn Slow Food that there might be an effort to hide the facts about Irish salmon drift-netting, he said that angling tourism once accounted for 11 per cent of visitors to Ireland, but, thanks to the dearth of salmon in Irish rivers, that number was now down to a one per cent.
According to Mr Vigfusson, "just about every scientist" deplored the way Ireland handled wild salmon issues; not just because those involved in drift-netting along the west coast were depleting Irish stocks, but also intercepting fish bound for rivers in Wales, southern England, France, Spain and Germany.
Yet the Government had "evaded and avoided all constructive dialogue" on the issue, including a request from North Atlantic Salmon Fund stakeholders in those countries under Article 66 of the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty to claim a share in the management of their salmon while they are in Irish waters.
Brian Marshall, chairman of the Wessex Salmon and Rivers Trust, challenged any idea that Irish drift-netting was "a folksy cottage industry sustaining deprived local communities"; its reported catch had risen from 397,000 to 518,000 wild salmon in the 10 years to 2003 and now represented 51 per cent of Europe's total.
"We contend that the fishery is illegal under the rules of the EU Habitats Directive," he told Mr Petrini in a letter. The trust was "most surprised and concerned" that the industry had been granted Slow Food certification when it fell so far short of the movement's aspirations. "The potential damage, both to the high regard in which Slow Food is held and the international efforts to curtail this most damaging of fisheries, is immeasurable," Mr Marshall wrote.
Paul Hilton, of the Mull District Salmon Fishery Board in Scotland, said the drift nets were continuing to remove wild salmon "until such time as there are none left" and he warned Mr Petrini: "Unless Slow Food makes a public statement against this activity, your effective endorsement . . . completely discredits your own organisation".
David Goodman, chairman of Red Mortgage Capital Inc, said Slow Food had been misinformed about the sustainability of wild Atlantic salmon, which were at the margin of survival.
"Should the Irish Government, with the support of its citizens, decide it wants to sack its cities, scorch its countryside and squander its treasure, perhaps it has standing to do so. But it can never justify stealing and destroying the wild Atlantic salmon that swim past Ireland on their arduous journeys to their native rivers," he said.
Robert Rauch, president of the Baden-Baden Fishing Club, said Germany was spending millions of euro to bring back salmon to its rivers. But since a lot of "German" salmon got caught in Irish nets, "all our money and effort are demolished to pieces. . . Ireland's archaic behaviour of not understanding all this cannot be supported".
André Dhellemmes, a French conservationist, said it was clear that hundreds of thousands of wild salmon were being killed every year on the way to spawn by Irish drift-nets.
"This is an intolerable massacre leading to the extinction of the species, absolutely not a sustainable fishery."