Brussels, 16/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - Europêche, which represents EU ship owners, warned consumers on Friday 13 February, about fraudulent labelling of tuna.
Europêche, which represents 80,000 fishermen in nine European countries, says that some tuna products appearing on the EU market are falsely claiming to have been caught without the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs), floating objects that have been employed for hundreds of years in both commercial and recreational fisheries to improve methods when catching ocean-going pelagic species, including tuna.
According to a recent European Parliament on the use of FADs in tuna fisheries, 11 out of 13 stocks of tropical tunas around the world have been found to be at healthy biomass levels. Europêche warns that the current proliferation of “FAD-free” tuna on the EU market based on self-certification could be “fraudulent and highly misleading to the consumer”. Europêche President Javier Garat said: “International fishing fleets must be strictly controlled and monitored across the entire supply chain”. (Lionel Changeur)