Sustainable fish on sale in Belsize

Fish counters are disappearing all over Britain as global stocks decline, quotas become tougher and fish becomes more expensive, so I'm delighted to see that Budgens has started selling fish in its Belsize Park store.

This is not only a welcome revival of a dying trade, but both Budgens and Pomona (the grocer a bit further down Haverstock Hill) are making very creditable attempts at having sustainable fish sourcing policies. Almost all the fish from both Budgens and Pomona comes from Loos in Cornwall which is a small port negotiating with the Marine Stewardship Council for the right to brand all of its catches as sustainably fished.

When I go out to dinner or to the fish shop I always take with me the Marine Conservation Society list of fish to avoid because I find this issue so difficult to get my head around. Oily fish (herring, mackerel, sardines) are good for us, but most of us prefer white fish like cod, haddock or monkfish which are disappearing fast. Fish farms are mostly ecological nightmares - farmed salmon requires at least 3kg of wild fish for every kg of salmon produced and usually contains traceable antibiotics and other cancer-inducing chemicals by the time it reaches your dinner plate. Industrial prawn farms in the Far East have decimated mangrove forests which were some of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Big fish like tuna contain dangerous levels of mercury. Line caught fish - the most sustainable kind - are horrendously expensive.

Andrew Thornton, who owns the Budgens franchise for Belsize Park (second from left in the photo above), and Martin Callaghan, who owns Pomona (below), are both trying to do the right thing while steering their fishing boats through the rocky rapids of quality vs sustainability vs health vs price. I applaud them for that. Fish just isn't easy - even for someone like me that spends so much of his time thinking about these things.