Profiles

Pisces Responsible Fish Restaurants

Read the July 24, 2009 article from IntraFish about Pisces RFR,
"Hitting the small time"

The Pisces Responsible Fish Restaurants scheme (Pisces-RFR) has been co-established in the UK by restaurateur Caroline Bennett (Moshi Moshi and Soseki) and marine ecologist Malcolm MacGarvin, to directly link restaurants with small-scale fishing boats using sustainable practices. Pisces-RFR helps chefs source better quality, more sustainable, more local fish and rewards good fishing practices with better prices for the fishermen. Pisces-RFR works with restaurants to evaluate the fish they currently use and potential alternatives; scoring for the quality of the fish, the fairness of the trading relationship between restaurant and fisherman and the environmental sustainability of the fisheries. Pisces-RFR fosters direct relationships with independent fishing families, securing their livelihood while at the same time being able to guarantee for the restaurants a strict environmental policy and top quality seafood via a simple to implement sourcing and ordering system.

“While much is written about sustainable fisheries, time, cost, practicalities, and simply knowing who to trust, make it difficult for chefs to turn good intentions into action. Pisces-RFR is a restaurant-led initiative that helps chefs make better choices, creating buyer-driven pressure for change. We do this by:
• Sourcing local, seasonal, fish by category rather than (pressured) species;
• Seeking out fishers who are reducing damage to the environment;
• Improving the quality of fish, providing an additional incentive to chefs.

After trialing this within a London and Brighton-based restaurant group, we are working on a London-based pilot involving 5-10 restaurants and also in Totnes, Devon. We provide an additional dimension to other initiatives, by actively engaging with the practical steps from sea to plate.“

Four steps to change:

Step 1 – Gather Information
To help us explore potential suppliers to the restaurants, we gathered information on some 1,300 different British fisheries – what are caught, how, when, and where – and produced local seasonality charts. For our London pilot we focus on Sussex, Kent and Essex; South West England; North East England and the Western Highlands. This helps us reduce (global) food miles, provides a range of species, and helps reduce disruption due to British weather!

Step 2 – Score the Fisheries
We then consider how (in Slow Food’s words) ‘good, clean and fair’ the fisheries are:

Good – the quality of the fish
Clean – sustainability
– stock status
– selectivity of the fishing gear
– wider environmental effects
Fair – fair returns

We start with the UN FAO’s Global Code of Conduct, regional scientific assessments of stocks, and those of the Marine Stewardship Council, and the Marine Conservation Society’s Fish Online. We then get out on boats. This is time consuming but essential, as there can be local differences in the health of stocks, and certainly in individual boat practices. It also allows us to assess quality, which varies between boats. We document this on our website, (www.pisces-rfr.org), and if we source from a boat, we also agree a fair trading relationship and supply route. This gives us three scores, for the good, clean and fair criteria, on a five point scale - from worst to best.

Step 3 – Score Restaurant ‘fish portfolios’
We also help restaurants score their existing overall fish ‘portfolio’ using the same five point scale, starting with supplier questionnaires. Chefs can identify which fish pull down the restaurant’s overall score, and monitor how well they are doing over time, replacing lower with higher scoring fish. The intent is to have the highest goals, but also have a flexible, transparent, approach to getting there. Currently there are very few, if any, perfect fisheries out there, and this gives us a practical, honest, way of encouraging the best without over-claiming.

Step 4 – Getting fish onto plates!
We then directly link chefs with specific fishers, nurturing a sense of responsibility.
That goes against decades of ever-more integrated supply chains, globalization and anonymity, which has resulted in keen prices, but also in mediocre quality, depleted stocks and wider damage. Surprisingly, in the UK, supply chains for inshore fresh fish can involve many intermediaries, delays, and lost quality. Inshore boats, at sea only for a few hours, and producing small volumes of the highest quality fish, can find their catches mixed in with everybody else's, and getting the same price.

Working against the flow requires a lot of effort, sometimes creating supply routes from scratch. Documenting the fishing is challenging, although we think we are on top of that. But getting fish on plates, building robust links capable of growing beyond the pilot, is a challenge of equal proportions – and one we are determined to meet!

- Contributed by Caroline Bennett and Malcolm MacGarvin, Pisces-RFR

By: Steve Robinson
July 24, 2009

Hitting the small time

One restaurateur’s back-to-basics sourcing scheme goes beyond the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) by linking restaurants to individual fishermen for better quality and more sustainable practices. Caroline Bennett wants change. Founder of U.K. sushi chains Moshi Moshi and Soseki, she was honored as a Seafood Champion by the Seafood Choices Alliance in March for her work removing endangered bluefin tuna from sushi bar menus. She is passionate about fish sourcing for her establishments and has now turned her attention to a matter a lot closer to home -- the relationship between local fishermen and restaurants. “There’s been a lot in the media on restaurant sustainability in London recently. A lot more chefs are aware [of the issues]. There’s a frustration there: you know the problems, you want to change the way you’re doing something and you can’t because there’s no-one offering anything different,” Bennett said.

To address the lack of opportunity to source from specific sustainably managed vessels, Bennett started a responsible fish restaurants scheme, Pisces, some 18 months ago. With due time and attention alongside her busy role at her sushi restaurants, the project is beginning to bear fruit.

Four restaurants incorporated under the scheme now source the majority of fish from four fishermen -- in Yorkshire, Suffolk and two in Cornwall. Malcolm MacGarvin, ecologist and former Greenpeace campaigner, is qualified to assess each of the fishermen who enter the scheme against sustainability and quality. To do this, Pisces uses a scoring system based on Slow Food’s principles of "good," "clean" and "fair," scoring for the eating quality of the fish (good), the fairness of the trading relationship between the restaurant and the fishermen (fair), and the sustainability of the fisheries (clean). Satisfied with the catch, Bennett and MacGarvin then assist the restaurants themselves in forming a relationship with the fishermen; a sort of sustainability consultancy. They educate and advise the chefs on what is best to use on the menu and, more importantly, what to avoid. “If a restaurants puts a controversial species on its menu -- if its on the MCS 'avoid' list, then we might be able to [tell chefs] it’s alright from certain areas and certain fishing boats, while the rest doesn’t want to take the flack,” Bennett said.

“It’s our responsibility to justify why we’re choosing something. Places like the Conran Group fell flat on their face a decade ago when they took cod of the menu, they got really lambasted for it. They just didn’t have the right info. We’re trying to take the pressure off the restaurant and take the responsibility [of choice] on ourselves." Above all, quality matters, especially to the high end restaurants that are primarily those interested in the scheme. The one-on-one relationship with fishermen may prove beneficial for promoting sustainable fishing, as well as ensuring the fisherman has a market and the restaurant a supplier, but ultimately the fish on the table needs to be perfect. “We’re trying to find these small scale fishermen and really up the quality in the restaurant, that’s one of the most rewarding things. The fish arrive still in rigor mortis often, and restaurants in London have just not seen that fresh. I think that ups the game," said Bennett.

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Updated July 28 , 2009

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