All fish caught should be landed
NOVEMBER 2010:Nick Griffin spoke during a debate in the European Parliament on fisheries in the Bay of Biscay, the Baltic and the Atlantic.
This is what the MEP for the North West of England told fellow MEPs.
"It is good that the European Union is trying to preserve endangered fish stocks. But before there is too much self-congratulation on these proposals, we must remember that many past EU fishing rules have been appalling failures.
Britain´s home waters have been fished to near extinction under European Fisheries policies. The reality is the protection of fish stocks is best left to local fishermen and national government marine scientists, not EU bureaucrats.
The advice from the men working in the broken remnants of Britain´s fishing fleets is simple: Scrap quota systems that lead to discards and highgrading (right), and replace them with weight-based catch limits so that all fish caught are landed for human consumption or for processing into animal and fish feed.
We need to replace the system of openly tradable quotas, and so stop financiers, supermarkets and the super rich from speculating in fishermen´s livelihoods.
Quotas of all kinds, and in whichever seas, should be owned by fishermen from ports with traditional connections to those waters, and be tradeable only between fishermen likewise entitled to fish by personal, family and community connections."
