After the Campaign for Real Ale and the Campaign for Real Bread, Britain may soon get a campaign for Real Fish.
Intensive farming practices are threatening the healthy image of one of Britain's booming industries, consumer groups say. They want a better deal for fish-lovers with new controls on labelling and the use of additives.
The proliferation of farmed fish has also drawn the fire of Britain's two leading writers on food, Egon Ronay and Drew Smith, editor of the "Good Food Guide". Ronay, president of the British Academy of Gastronomes and Sunday Times critic, said last week: "Farmed salmon has a distinctly muddy taste whereas wild salmon really tastes like salmon. It is much the same as comparing frozen chicken with fresh chicken."
Artificial colouring, processed foodstuffs and antibiotics are now used to create the marketing man's perfect pink salmon. Many "smoked" fish are not - they are merely dipped into chemicals.
The initiative for a Campaign for Real Fish is being spearheaded by the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth. The group, along with trading standards officers and the Consumers' Association, wants clear labels to show if fish has been farmed or caught in the wild. Labels should also show whether "smoked salmon" has just been dipped in a chemical flavour and if the fish is pink artificially.
David Roberts, chief trading standards officer for Shropshire and a fish industry authority, last week called for tougher controls on farmed fish to bring the industry into line.
"The time is right for a legal requirement to label it either farmed or wild," he said. "People have a right to know if what they are buying has been tarted up and decorated. A big problem is so-called smoked fish. In fact, there is very little genuine smoking going on. Most of it is simply fish dipped in artificial smoke-flavoured solution."
The British consume more fish every year - nearly 15lb a head - than any country in Europe except Sweden. Farming everything from halibut to salmon and shell fish is booming business. Worldwide production is expected to rise from a current 7m tonnes a year to 22m tonnes by the end of the century. In Britain, salmon production is rising by 30 per cant a year and will reach 153,000 tonnes a year by 1990.
Ronay said a campaign for real fish would help to raise public concern. His academy is planning to press the Ministry of Agriculture for regulations to govern fish farming and in particular smoked fish. He said: "I think this dipping is very suspect."
Drew Smith fears that people who have only ever tasted farmed salmon may not realise what the real thing caught in the wild tastes like. He said: "We are in danger of ending up with salmon treated as a single product. You only have to look at what's happened to pigs. Hardly anyone knows there are over 100 different strains; pig meat is just seen as pig meat. I say, vive la difference."
Andrew Lees, countryside campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "We want a campaign for real fish to encourage the harvesting of fish in the wild as opposed to farms."
On some farms, fish are kept in conditions hundreds of times more crowded than in nature - up to one part fish for three parts water. "The problem with farmed salmon is that they get no exercise," says one leading nutritionist.
"In the wild, they spend an enormous amount of time swimming up rivers which means they deplete their fat reserves, so are very lean and healthy to eat when caught. Proper government guidelines on rearing are now needed."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture defended the use of colouring saying only one chemical, canthaxanthin, was permitted.
He added: "We stand by the argument that the use of artificial colouring in small quantities does not constitute a danger to the public."
