Europêche, which brings together the organisations representing the European tropical tuna distant water fishing fleet (Anabac, Opagac and Orthongel), has been alerting the European institutions for several months about the impossibility of complying with the provisions of the regulation on the margin of tolerance, according to a press release published on Thursday 14 July.
This rule requires that there should be no more than a 10% difference per species between the estimates on board and the actual catches landed.
The industry argues that by operating in temperatures above 30°C, captains have only minutes to sort and freeze their catch before histamine appears in the tuna, making the fish unfit for human consumption. Furthermore, tuna species cannot be easily distinguished from each other in such a short time. Technological solutions are currently being studied by the fleet, but their development will take several years.
The tropical tuna fleet is asking to be able to apply this 10% margin of tolerance not by species, but to the entire catch on board.
Orthongel has published a study showing that, if nothing changes, by 2026 the burden of sanctions on turnover will be so unbearable that shipowners (seines) and 1,600 jobs may simply disappear.
See Orthongel’s study: https://aeur.eu/f/2ml (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)