Experts say that consumers fear fish and that is why their consumption decreases. Smelling it, handling it and cooking it generates rejection, especially among young people, and that could explain why it has less and less presence on Spanish menus. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food reported at the beginning of the year that in 2022 the volume of fresh fish consumed in Spain was the lowest in the historical series, with a decrease of 38.6% compared to 2008. These disastrous data have made that supermarkets like Mercadona have reduced the space that fishmongers occupy in their stores and have opted to present the animal gutted, boneless, refrigerated and packaged, thus making life easier for the consumer.
This trend generated debate a few weeks ago, when a Twitter user asked the Valencian chain why the fishmonger’s space in one of its stores had been reduced and, instead, it had more refrigerators with laminated fish. Mercadona responded as follows: “This is a new sales model whose objective is to encourage the consumption of fish, offering it clean and already prepared. (…) The trays are made with recycled material and can be recycled if they are deposited in the yellow container,” the tweet said. Carrefour is another supermarket that in recent years has dedicated more space to packaged fish presented for grilling. However, large stores are not the only ones betting on this strategy.
Edgar Salsas Boada, son of a wholesaler, grandson of a fishmonger and great-grandson of a fisherman, has been selling fish at home for more than a decade, and from his company Peix a Casa he sends the product adapted to the customer, without bones or guts. and filleting. He started his business when there were practically no online fishmongers and communicates with buyers through WhatsApp or by phone. “In this way, the consumer is not forced to travel and we can adjust their order to the number of people in the family unit. Salsas Boada explains that selling the fish in this way can help young people see it as more attractive and manageable.
They vacuum pack the product, so that it can be consumed and frozen whenever desired. “Any fish can be filleted, but we also send it whole if requested,” he explains. They offer whitebait and less exploited species, such as horse mackerel, but what they sell the most is hake, monkfish and, above all, salmon. “It’s not that people are going for the easy thing, but that more and more people are looking for species with little fishy flavor and that don’t smell.” The vacuum bags they use are made of thick plastic, because they keep the product better, but they also give their buyers the alternative of choosing a compostable artichoke one, although they do not preserve the fish as well.
From La Pescadería de María, which operates online, they also sell fish in this format. In this way, they ensure and eliminate unpleasant odors and liquids and prevent them from being an obstacle to the consumption of these products. “The customer only has advantages, they practically do not even have to touch the product,” explains Susana Prades, co-founder and marketing director. The service they offer is similar to that of a conventional fishmonger, they explain, because the buyer can choose the presentation and the fish they want, also whole. However, they sell it cleaner and in fillets, “a very attractive presentation for people and, especially young people, who do not want to get their hands dirty.” As in the previous cases, the fish is packaged in plastic, but it is sent through recyclable isothermal boxes.
Presenting the pieces like this, therefore, is not a solution that few businesses resort to. The question is what implications this model has and whether, although it promotes fish consumption, it compensates for drawbacks such as increased use of plastic or a loss of knowledge regarding the identification of species and the handling and cooking of these seafood products. Cristina Caparrós, daughter of fishermen, shipowner and businesswoman from the fishing neighborhood of Barceloneta, points to a first danger: the decrease in the species consumed. “The problem is that in supermarket refrigerators where we find it filleted, cleaned and packaged, it is common to find overexploited species that come from farms, such as sea bass, sea bream and salmon, and the local product has little prominence. Selling in this format is not the problem, but taking advantage of this trend to sell less sustainable and overexploited species,” he warns.
Amanda Barba, a research technician at the Alícia Foundation, agrees with her and points out that this favoritism for species that are not local has several consequences. “The one we like the most by far is salmon, a phenomenon that in Alicia we call ‘salmonitis’. As with sea bass or sardines, it is easy to cook and consume, and even more so if it is delivered to us clean, filleted and packaged. But “Outsourcing so much fish handling to the food industry results in a loss of food culture, tradition and gastronomy.” This means, for example, that traditional recipes that are more elaborate than grilled fish could be forgotten and, with them, ways to use 100% of the product.
The industry, Barba continues, may have the tools to take advantage of those parts of the animal that are discarded when it is only presented in fillets, and it must be encouraged to do so. But the consumer can also be trained in this matter. This is what they do from La Platjeta, a project that Caparrós and his family promoted 15 years ago with the aim of promoting fresh, quality and local fish and seafood. In addition to selling seafood, they transmit the seafaring culture that they know so well, a task that Caparrós also carries out from the Associació a Cap a Mar. “Although we offer filleted and packaged fish, we encourage the consumer to buy it whole. Also “We educate. And if one day the client leaves us because he has lost his fear of fish and has enough training to go shopping at the market, it won’t hurt us.”
In addition to making the population aware of these unknown, but local and seasonal species, and the ways to cook them, Platjeta also tries to solve the challenge of not generating much plastic waste. For this reason, they use biocompostable containers and continue studying ways to work with more sustainable packaging. However, says Barba, using these materials is more complicated for the industry, which due to the way it works has to use a lot of plastic. Furthermore, “there is no interest in local and seasonal fish, whose production is not always stable. They must supply large quantities of product and prefer the security that farmed fish give them.”
In short, experts agree that the sale of clean, filleted and packaged fish, if it promotes the intake of seafood, does not have to be something negative. “But it must be a logical, healthy and sustainable trend. In which local species have a leading role and that is committed to environmentally friendly packaging,” says Barba. “We must fight against large companies that package distant products and give value to fish from here, looking for a way for the consumer to know about it,” concludes Caparrós.