I attended a very interesting webinar yesterday hosted by Food Thinkers - Towards Civil Food Resilience with speaker Prof. Tim Lang. A new report is being developed by Professor Tim Lang for the National Prepared Commission to establish the need for food supply being considered within resilience planning in the UK. After we saw how much fell to supermarkets and local producers to fill the gap left by the government, that’s not such a bad thing.
One thing he said which made me think and that’s - only sustainable food systems are resilient, and vice versa - but I would like to add that that animal welfare has to be part of that resilience.
The government’s Fish Management Plans have included crab and lobster as ‘Significant gaps remain in our understanding of English crab and lobster stocks and fisheries, both in terms of fishing activity and its level of impact on stocks.’
The health of decapods is necessary to protect the food webs, ecosystems, and biodiversity they are an integral part of, and to protect their health you need animal welfare standards.
I think for too long we have gotten used to just reaching into the sea and pulling out an abundance of seafood, but the quantity of lobster landings into the United Kingdom by UK vessels from 2014 to 2021 has decreased. In places like Canada, also famous for their lobsters, they are also experiencing an unprecedented situation, with not enough lobsters to sustain current processing capacity.
The resilience of the decapods in the sea are being compromised and this is risking the sustainability of this important food source.
As stated by the World Federation for Animals
“Nature needs animals to flourish. Its food webs, ecosystems, and biogeochemical cycles rely on animals’ health, relationships, needs, behaviour, interactions, resilience, and adaptations all of which are animal welfare issues.”
#reslience #animalwelfare #sustainability
Great work Kepak Group!