Britain's hard-pressed fishermen face a new threat to their livelihoods. Scientists have developed indoor fish farms that can mass-produce cod, eel, turbot, sea bass, salmon, catfish and lobster.
The technology, pioneered with backing from the European Community and British investors, enables millions of seawater and fresh-water fish to be reared throughout the year at "fish factories", in tanks housed within huge hangars.
The move has alarmed environmentalists, who yesterday condemned the battery-farm rearing as cruel, deep sea fishermen, who fear it will further undermine their ailing industry, and culinary experts, who believe the farm fish will be less tasty and wholesome.
But experts who have masterminded the technique in Denmark said the farms offered an economic alternative to trawler fishing, and would help preserve depleted fish stocks.
Two Danish farms, producing 300 tons of eel and turbot a year, have already established markets, and British companies are preparing to follow suit.
Businesses in a further 20 countries have also expressed an interest, according to Keld Nielsen, managing director of the Danish Institute of Aquaculture Technology (Diat), which pioneered the technique. "The aim is to build the fish farms all over the world. The potential is infinite because they can be built anywhere," he said.
The farms have been made possible by the development of a filtration system that purifies the water in the tanks four times an hour. This means no additional water has to be stored, as in traditional outdoor salmon and trout farms, and reduces the space needed.
Tens of thousands of fish can be reared in a tank containing just 40 cubic metres of water. They can also be farmed year-round, being kept warm in the winter so they gain weight. The indoor fish farm at Egtved in Denmark is already producing 9,000 eels for Japan in each of its 20 tanks.
The development has been backed by more than รบ250,000 of EC money, and there has been significant funding from Blantyre Holdings, a company based in Birmingham.
One leading food processing company, Ross Young's in Grimsby, Humberside, is believed to be taking a keen interest in the new farming method as a means of securing a more predictable supply of fish.
The prospect of a new generation of indoor farms has, however, angered fishermen. Mike Townsend, spokesman for the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation, said it was a cynical attempt by the EC to get round the problem of smaller fish stocks and disputed national quotas. "The EC should be spending money looking after stocks at sea rather than undermining an industry with this new farming method," he said.
"It's back to the old battery-hens syndrome and the EC's part in it proves they are ducking and diving away from the real issues all the time."
Tony Juniper, habitats campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said yesterday that he feared the reduction of pressures on fish stocks would be overshadowed by the threats of chemically stimulated fish growth. "We just don't know what the impact of effluents and chemicals used to promote rapid growth of these fish will do to the environment.
"It would be much better to properly manage existing fish stocks rather than rely on something that is not natural and could be damaging to the environment when these tanks and effluents are disposed of."
Culinary experts are also sceptical. Steven Agyepong, fish buyer for Harrods, the London store, said people generally favoured the taste of fresh "free-range" fish. "We would have to check the quality of indoor farmed fish very carefully before putting it on sale," he said. "Although we stock some fish reared in open fish farms, most people prefer it fresh."
Antony Worrall-Thompson, the chef and London restaurateur, said: "We do serve some farmed fish and that is perfectly acceptable. But I do have some concerns because farmed fish never have fully developed muscles because they don't swim in open sea. That can make them less good to taste."
The developers of the technique are confident there will be a demand and discount fears about "cruelty".
Edward Burrows, spokesman for Diat, said: "Keeping fish indoors is far less polluting and far kinder than in external fish farms or, indeed, catching them in nets at sea."
