ANFACO Wants To “De-Commoditize” Canned Tunaff

Source: Spanish Press

Spain’s National Association of Canned Fish and Shellfish (Anfaco-Cecopesca) has called for “dignified” fishing of tuna in order to ensure sustainable supplies for the future and prevent the fish from becoming a “commodity”.

According to Juan Manuel Vieites da Sousa, Anfaco’s general secretary, fishing for tuna “needs to be dignified, as does all products made from it”, before warning that tuna supplies are expected to be tight in the short term – “between three months and one year.”

One of the largest threats to the Galician canning industry, which is causing “high concern” for 2011, continues to be the European Union’s relations with third countries. These countries are imposed less demands on community trade and are therefore “very harmful to the Spanish tuna industry”, Vieites said.

He added that tuna is scarce and seasonal, due to a “structural problem which is not cyclical, of a global nature, which compels us to further study the situation in the future”.

For example, in 2010, tuna landings fell by 40 per cent in the main ports of Galicia.

Specifically, in A Pobra, 120,000 tons were landed in 2009 and 85,000 tons in 2010, while in Ribeira, they caught 40,000 tons two years ago and only 35,000 tons last year.

According to Vieites “throughout the world, they process around four million tons of tuna raw material  per year, and with the new global concentration of the industry that is occurring, new groups control nearly three quarters, and this means that for other markets, which includes the European Union (EU), there will be a million tons of which Spain will only consume from 500,000 tons of tuna to 600,000 a year.”

Canners are therefore trying to “push the European administration” to protect their interests and “that treaties with third countries must be negotiated in order for them to be more balanced.”

Between late January and early February, the canning industry expected to approach the EU and the EP with their problems and proposals to find a solution together.

The industry faces not only shortages of the species but also new control policies, piracy in the Indian Ocean and the concentration of major world groups in the hands of a select few.

To reverse this scenario, it is essential to tackle the “restructuring of both the production and transformation,” said Vieites.

Finally, Anfaco stressed that it remains of a concern for the EU that third countries impose fewer demands on European trade, which is very harmful for the EU tuna industry.