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Since the Second World War, British politics has principally been dominated by the debate about which politicians would make us more prosperous. But in recent years it has become increasingly clear that a key driving force is how we can maintain or improve our current lifestyles in the face of environmental change.

Sustainable development is cropping up more and more in conversations and meetings around the FSA, and like everybody else we have a duty to ensure this issue informs all of our activities and policies. Indeed, we have an action plan that ties in with the Agency’s current strategic plan to take our work forward.

With this in mind, we’ve now decided to review our advice on eating fish to take into account environmental concerns.  Our dietary advice – that we should all aim to eat at least two portions of fish a week, one of which should be an oily fish – is based on sound scientific evidence for the health benefits of fish consumption.  Our aim now is to produce dietary advice that takes into account nutrition, safety and sustainability evidence rather than open up this nutritional evidence for re-appraisal.

It is an interesting area which neatly sums up this paradox of 21st century life – we know that on average we eat nowhere near enough fish in the UK and that eating more would make a major contribution towards achieving a healthy and balanced diet.  However, there is widespread consumer concern as we know that eating some types of fish raises issues about declining fish stocks and modern fishing methods. 

This will be a difficult task but advice such as this will have a net benefit for us all – if you’ll excuse the pun.