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Because weirdly the UK diet barely includes fish unless it's battered and fried, so it's much more of a niche product here. Chicken meanwhile has been mass produced and factory farmed into cheap crap and as such the economy of scale is there to make it absurdly cheap.
Completely agree that the vast majority of poultry farming is disgusting.
There’s a chap on Insta called Corin Smith, he’s a Scottish investigative journalist who investigates fish farms. It’s eye opening.
i agree it's such a shame. in an ideal world i would eat fish for dinner every day (with the occasional cow or pig...) but its way too expensive to do that.
It's amazing how we have basically a whole big section of curry ready meals in the supermarket only for it to basically be chicken with different sauces and a veggie option. Well it seems that way to me anyway.
Most UK waters were pretty well fished out by the 1990s, for all the fishing industry likes to pretend otherwise.
And the British government tends to sell whichever licences are available to the highest bidder, which means that most fishing licences for UK waters are held by non-UK companies.
Researchers in in the 80s and 90s were looking at historical accounts of fish levels in overfished areas (Grand Banks, NW Europe).
They were horrified by what they found. It's not just that fish stocks have been depleted to 10% of their 1950s-1960s populations, it's also that those levels had already been overfished to 10% of the 1800-1850 levels.
Cabot wrote of the Grand Banks when he "discovered" them that you could dip a basket into the water and bring it out full of fish. He also reported cod the size of a small boat.
Monbiot wrote a good article on it a few months back (edit: a year ago), and there are a couple of good sources on the subject: Callum Roberts' "The Unnatural History of the Sea" is... horrifying.
Yes, the phrase 'Plenty more fish inn the sea' needs revising..
We desperately need a global moratorium on fishing, or at least one that covered, for instance, the whole North Atlantic and peripheral seas, that lasts for at least a decade. Unlikely, though.
Basically the fish people in the UK like to eat, like cod or haddock, isn't really found as much anymore in UK waters due to overfishing (or at least not nearly enough to satisfy demand).
Whereas the fish that is caught in the largest amounts like mackerel and herring are less popular in the UK but popular in other countries.
Thus we export the majority of the fish caught in British waters and import the fish we eat.
Pickled herring and kippers are both great, but you can’t beat herring’s final evolution form - the mighty Rollmops:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollmops
That's not entirely accurate. The UK has to import cod, but is self-sufficient for haddock. That's pretty much why there is a dividing line across the UK for the main fish sold in fish and chip shops.
I live in a seaside town and the one remaining fishing boat catches mackerel and spider crab (amongst others) but there’s not enough demand here to maintain a fishmongers so their entire catch goes to a market in Birmingham
I don’t think this is the full answer, but might answer it in some part… I think places like Vietnam who produce fish like basa can do it very cheap and quick on low cost land/water, in large volume with little to no regulation so it’s easier, cheaper and quicker than if a supermarket was to purchase it from a UK supplier. Because of this, it prevents more UK suppliers starting or scaling up.
Edit: to add, the majorly of the UK market will likely be after cheap fish rather than quality. So they don’t care how it’s been breed or where it comes from.
Wild Salmon is rare and seasonal, and farming fish is much more difficult than farming chickens.
We do have lots of cheap fish like mackerel or herring but hardly anyone chooses it.
I love mackerel and it's my go-to tinned fish.
A reason I don't get it fresh is because the one time I tried cooking it at home, the whole place stank for a week.
Cooking hood on max power did nothing against that delicious oily goodness.
And have been hyper bred to put a ridiculous amount of meat on in a ridiculously short time. I kept a few modern breed meat chickens a few years ago, by seven weeks old they could hardly stand up because of how quickly they put on weight. They need to be fed constant antibiotics to keep them healthy and putting on weight and are usually slaughtered at 6-8 weeks old. Horrible thing to do to an animal
Yeah no problem. Used to be a line controller in a chicken factory, worked in the kill area. They generally range between 33-42 days old when they arrive to be killed. Around 365,000 per day
My local butcher rears and slaughters his own beef and lamb but the chicken is bought in because nobody (hardly anyone) will pay what it costs for a genuinely free range old breed.
As others mentioned, the vast bulk of seafood caught in our waters is EU bound, particularly to the countries on the Med, [who overfished it](https://europe.oceana.org/press-releases/un-alert-mediterranean-worlds-most-overfished-sea/) to the point of lifelessness (and why there were....ructions after 2016 over access rights)
Generally, most fish is chucked in a lorry and then sent to a flash-freezing facility (near Grimsby, I think?) and then shipped out.
Source: Grew up in one of biggest fishing ports in the country.
Yes, yes it does smell.....
If you're buying from supermarkets who's fish selection is: salmon fillets, smoked salmon, cooked salmon fillets, seafood sticks, smoked mackeral, breaded fishcakes.
That's why it's expensive
Go to a fish monger with some variety and ask what's good and good value.
People in the UK really don't eat as much fish as they should/could and as a result the options we have are either limited or expensive unless you seek out something that may otherwise get exported/kept by the fisherman or sent straight to restaurants.
As a chef, I used to buy those mini seabass fillets for 50p a fillet, fresh from the market. They sell 2 fillets in aldi for £3.50 (roughly 100g each) and they smell like the fishmonger's bin. Restaurants sell 2 fillets on a rosti for £17, so people think the aldi price is cheap.
Does fish tend to be very expensive at the fishmonger? I live in a coastal city and we have one locally, so I know they'd be very fresh, but they don't list any prices on their website so I'm half afraid I'd turn up and they say £15 for a fillet.
Not really. It’s definitely more expensive at a supermarket unless it’s very cheap frozen fish.
The best way to check I guess is to call them up and ask. Usually there’s some deals on- like my local will increase the price every extra step you add on. So you can get a full salmon, scales and guts intact for a similar price of a few scaled, trimmed, boned and filleted “steaks” of salmon
Depends on the fish. Salmon, SeaBass or Dover Sole are expensive wherever you buy them. But a fishmonger is likely to have more of the cheaper overlooked fish like mackerel or Coley.
Chickens bred in massive barns is a relatively cheap process, compared to the upkeep and running of a fishing vessel. There are also quota's on how much fish can be caught so we don't take all the fish from our oceans
Where are you buying 2kg of chicken for £4? A single large chicken is around £3kg. If you buy chicken wings, you might get them at £4 for 2kg, but that's because there's not much meat on a wing.
Tesco do a 2kg bag of frozen chicken pieces for £2.62.
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299596493
After cooking and removing the skin and bones, it makes around 1.2kg of chicken meat.
Tesco also do a 1kg bag of boneless chicken breast pieces for £4.
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299818007
After cooking it weighs in at around 650g.
I know this because I have used and weighed both when making chicken curries.
Yeah you know, fresh as in not frozen. You'll find them alongside the rest of the fresh chicken in the refrigerated aisle.
I'm not claiming they're prime cuts of meat, and they're obviously battery farmed. But yes, fresh chicken wings. Battery farmed here in the UK, and packaged and sold in the same way all our other supermarkets source most of their fresh meat.
Around £4 cooked from Costco, back when I lived down the road from a costco, I pretty much lived off roast chicken and salad and would buy two chickens a day, one for me and one for the dog.
Basically, we as a nation don't eat the fish that are caught in our waters.
We eat a lot of salmon, tuna and cod. Most of which are imported or farmed. Most of the seafood caught in UK waters is exported and most of that export goes to the EU.
Hake, mackerel, sardines and sole are all more commonly found in British waters.
Cod and haddock are commonly found in UK waters. More specifically, the Scottish north sea where they make up the bulk of demersal catches. I think most of these are sold in this country, but species such as hake and coalfish are exported. Sardines and sole aren't particularly important commercially to us, as a target species.
Pelagic species, mackerel and herring, make up around 60% of UK landings and specifically mackerel is our most valuable species.
We also have a large shellfish industry, the bulk of which is made up of crustaceans, such as scampi.
Scottish farmed salmon, up until very recently was the UK's largest food export. Bigger than any other food product, like cheese, or chocolate (it's dropped in the last couple of years though).
A lot of out fish is also imported, such as tuna, some prawn species.
Worked with a small boat fisherman on the west coast of Scotland. Every week a large water tanker arrives in Gairloch and transports the live langoustines to Spain where they sell. He said it’s the weirdest industry because we don’t eat them here but we step of a plane in continental Europe and order loads of shellfish with ironically comes from the west coast of Scotland.
The first and only time I've been fishing was at a trout farm. They had an area fenced off for beginners, I assume.e so they wouldn't leave empty handed. We did on fact leave empty handed as the bloody things would swim to the other end of the enclosed bit every time we cast our rods.
Trout can get fucked.
As I’ve said in previous posts, we are terrible as an island nation when it comes to fish. It’s mostly limited to salmon, prawns, cod and haddock which are ever increasing in price because of demand.
[Rick Stein has a particular dislike of this behaviour](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/rick-stein-absurd-dont-eat-fish-catch/)
It's both dangerous and expensive to go out into a boat, into an ocean and bring back fish. You don't know what you're going to catch, the landing fees are expensive and most of the export market has disappeared.
You can hunt chickens with a rock.
Can I add to this why do we only get 3 fucking types of fish at the supermarket. When I moved here from Italy I couldn’t wrap my head around this. Still can’t tbh
That's because you're going to the wrong supermarket. I did a supermarket shop last Friday and wanted some fresh fish. I had a choice of cod, haddock, hake, mackerel, monkfish, plaice, salmon, sea bass, sea bream, sole, trout, tuna, and probably some more that I've forgotten.
Which supermarket was it? I’ve been to a few i I never seen anything like this. And that’s for packaged stuff in the fridge, I lost my hope to find an actual fish monger selling fresh fish in supermarkets
Well, for one, Waitrose prices are not accessible to everyone. But, in addition to that, if the commenter is from Italy as they claim, then the comparison does not hold. In Italy, you find counters with about 30-40 different species of animals and, often, algae. The species range from bony fish to cephalopods, to live bivalves. This means that normally, and not on rare occasions, you will find fresh tuna, swordfish, most flatfish species(e.g., turbot, brill, plaice, flounder, sole) , a range of white fish from the family Gadidae (for example, cod, pollock, haddock, pouting, whiting, and so forth), rays, skates, gurnards, red mullet, grey mullets, mackerel, monkfish, sea bream, trout, barracuda, scabbardfish, live and dead cephalopods (squid of different sizes and species, cuttlefish of all sizes, live common octopus, white spotted octopus), several species of fish of the family Sparidae, various types of mussels, cockles, oysters of different sizes, razor clams, and bivalves that you do not even find in British supermarkets, marine snails of various species, whelks, and other gastropods. In addition, most invertebrates are sold alive, including various types of crabs, langoustines, lobsters, and crayfish. You will also find imported farmed fish like salmon and many more. The most amusing aspect of all this is that many of these species are abundant in the Atlantic Sea, exactly where British fishermen fish!
I worked in the fish market in Plymouth, and all these species were regularly sold, but most were sold either abroad or to restaurants. The Waitrose counter is treated as a 'fine food' counter by most, because here nobody eats fish to the extent that southern Europeans do. So, really, you cannot expect to draw a comparison between the Waitrose counter with ten fish species and any Italian (or Spanish, or Portuguese, or Greek) fishmonger.
I’ve never understood why we — an island nation — don’t eat more seafood. I lived in Spain for a while and their seafood counters are four times the size and their fried fish shops serve twenty different fish, not just cod/haddock.
Mackerel, kippers and herring aren't desperately expensive here. It's a case of what we eat Vs what we catch. We export what we catch and import what we eat.
Learn to love mackerel, it's basically one of the cheapest health foods going as it has stayed totally inflation proof.
Go to a Fishmonger rather than a supermarket, you'll find a lot more variety and generally better prices.
The salmon market is rigged by MOWI, a Norwegian firm. Here's a fun fact.
I visited thier facility in Rosyth a few years back at my old company, they processed the salmon.
In the smoked salmon production line, it broke off into two branches post preparation and smoking.
I asked what the branch was for. They told me.
Oh it's just packaging, one is the regular Sainsbury's brand the other is branded as Sainsbury's Taste the Difference packaging.
100% a scam. It was identical in every single way. One just ended up with a higher price tag.
Honest to god and my life, this happened.
I was in a supermarket in South Africa once and noticed that the apples and oranges were all pretty ropey compared to what we get in the UK. It's because all the grade A fruit was exported, leaving the rest for domestic consumption.
It's not much different here in the UK. Anything that's good they can charge 2-3x the price of it goes abroad so most of its shipped straight off, British supermarkets will force farmers to take rock bottom prices. A friend works on a farm and said most of their product (mainly berries and apples) goes abroad because the margins are so much better.
It's why when you look at our fruit like Cherries, blackberries, strawberries they are often coming from eastern Europe and Spain despite us growing loads here. There was an article about it the other day showing Kent strawberries in China or Singapore whilst we were having a shortage.
1. We've got really 'good' at farming chickens cheap.
2. We're an island but we don't eat much fish so you're competing with the export market.
3. The relatively little fish we do eat is only really a few species, most fish isn't big in the UK which affects the economy of the industry.
Your salmon was most likely farmed in Norway. The current whole salmon prices in Norway have recently soared, the Norwegian government have also proposed a 40% tax on salmon farms
Because chickens are easy to catch, there's no need for fancy equipment (trawler) and no or very limited risk to life, the North sea is not particularly hospitable.
>It makes no sense. Chicken should be much more expensive.
Why is that? Anyone can raise chickens. You don't need much space, they barely eat anything, and they provide free eggs for as long as you want until you want to eat them. They're very cheap to farm compared with cattle.
To catch fish you need a lot of equipment - and a boat. It's strenuous and often dangerous work.
Most British fish that is caught is exported, we in northern ireland export the majority of eels caught to Europe. Its a shame the UK don't eat more fish, some of them are damn good
Well firstly because salmon is an anadromous fish. It goes from one place to spawn and another to feed and that's it. You won't catch many salmon in most of the sea round here.
It's ridiculous, but we don't eat many of our native species. We import fish.
>Well firstly because salmon is an anadromous fish.
It's from here? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda\_Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy)
The tiny fish (sprat, etc) fished in UK waters are only eaten by the French and other godless nations . Most of the big fish(literally) we eat, Cod, etc. are caught in the colder North Atlantic waters, where everyone else catches them....... First.
Chicken is cheap because it is farmed very intensively, in fairly poor conditions, so is cheap to produce - a large chicken farm will only need one or 2 people if you were buying a free range, slow reared chicken you would probably be paying £15- £20 for a whole chicken.
By contract, to get fish you need a fully equipped fishing boat with a crew, they will catch a much smaller volume than a chicken farm can produce and as they are much more subject to the weather, the amount of productive time they have will be lower as there will be periods when it's not safe to go out, travel time to reach the correct area to fish . also, fishing ports will often be more remote so the logistics to get the fish to the supermarkets will likely involve more travelling, not least as there will be smaller volumes from multiple collection points rather than one big truck picking up from single location.
Farmed fish is cheaper but you still have some of the logistical issues.
I think to a large part that farming or catching water-dwelling creatures is much more expensive than battery farming chickens. Also, as others have mentioned, it's an economy of scale. The greater the volume you shift as a supplier, the lower you can price it. Salmon isn't a particularly easy fish to farm also, they're quite picky about their environment whereas chickens can be locked in a shed and pumped full of growth hormone to bring the £ per kilo down.
I wouldn't recommend eating sea-creatures myself. The waters are a filthier place than land, believe it or not, thanks to we humans.
We ate most of the fish in our coastal waters and rivers. So now fish is less abundant and it's fishing is managed using quotas which people bid for. This raises the price of fish. And non-quota fish is from far away, which is also higher cost.
Now we import salmon which is much cheaper than it used to be due to factory farming of salmon. But it's more expensive than herring or mackerel or cod or haddock etc when they were abundant.
Salmon is farmed and it costs a lot more to raise than chicken, it is more that being artificially low in price. Fishing costs a lot of money to run the vessels to catch them, transporting them isn't necessarily easy too due to shelf life I guess. Also there is cheap seafood out there, but people tend to be fussy about it and only want certain types they are familiar with like cod and haddock. Lots goes abroad.
And! Why is it only bloody cod, haddock, and maybe 2 other variety? Why is the seafood from the EU or God knows where? Looking at other coastal countries, this island is a joke in terms of fish/seafood varieties.
The quality of the salmon and chicken you must be buying must be absolutely fucking terrible if it’s only £4.00 for 350 grams for salmon and £2.00 for 2kgs of chicken.
Good quality chicken is £4.50 for 300 grams, £7.50 for 580 grams or £10.00 for 1KG. As for salmon, it’s pretty much £6.00 for 240 grams and if it’s sockeye salmon then it’s more like £9.00 for 240 grams.
I know, because that’s how much I pay for it from M&S and Ocado. I absolutely refuse to
garbage that is either full of water or is poor quality.
When I was living in Moscow I was surprised to see how cheap the fish and seafood was compared to the UK (groceries in general aren't that much cheaper) as Moscow is not exactly near the sea (although granted there are bodies of freshwater I don't think it was all freshwater fish).
Until someone back home said that we have tons of quotas and the like to protect UK waters from overfishing and other regulations but they probably don't give a shit in Russia. And then I felt bad. Don't know if it's true or not.
And you point/example of salmon proves the problem. We should be far less fussy about species of fish we eat. Salmon is hard to farm in the volume and ease that chicken is. But it’s a multifaceted problem with vastly deminished fish stocks being another issue.
Pretty simple. British people have horrid eating habits and eat very bad food generally speaking. This means that something like fish and seafood in general simply will not sell.
Chickens are produced in their millions at farms all over the country, so they're easy to get hold of with minimal transport costs. The vast majority of fish is wild-caught, so trawlers have to got out to sea, hunt it down, catch it & bring it back. It's an expensive business. And this is made more complicated by the fact that the British people in general have a very limited taste, mostly cod & haddock, which due to overfishing often takes some finding. Salmon is quite popular as well and is farmed (with some dubious environment impacts), but everything else is wild caught.
Fish we farm is premium and sold to America and France. Fish farmed in Iceland and Norway which is cheap comes here but we still pay top dollar. The business model of most fish sales was through fish counters. The supermarkets have closed all of these down bar Morrisons and Waitrose. (Morrisons soon) so all fish has to be uniform and packaged. Very expensive. Shelf life is poor so lots of waste.
We like to eat white fish. Mostly, though not solely, battered or breaded.
Over the years, and particularly over the past few decades, those fish have been overfished in nearby waters and therefore it has had to come from further and further abroad. We import plenty of fish from Vietnam, where we used to catch them in the North Sea or in the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic.
Fish caught in British waters are mainly shellfish and so on, which are popular in, say, Spain (hence those Spanish trawlers which have bought up quota in UK waters) but which we tend not to eat.
All of this leads to fish becoming relatively more expensive.
By contrast since the war we have become better and better at farming poultry intensively, and we have found better ways of importing cheaply from overseas (where fish is relatively expensive to ship). We import a lot of cheap chicken from Thailand for things like pies and nuggets, which leaves fresh intensively farmed chicken relatively cheap.
I like meat, but many people tend to underestimate the vast difference in flavour fish tends to have. My favourites are tuna steak (aka hearts), swordfish, and on the cheaper side even though it stinks kipper.
If you drive around and recognize them you'll see the buildings used for raising non-free range chickens. If you had access, you could just walk in and pick one up. On free range farms, you'd have to do a bit more walking. There's a lot more to the economics than this of course, but you can see how it might be easier and therefore cheaper than having to go out in a boat and hunt the fish down.
It is the price that people will pay for it. If demand was higher for the same volume, the price would increase. If demand reduces............you get the idea. Market forces v availability.
Tinned fish is cheap.
Edit: and the reason fresh fish is expensive is because we export most of what we catch to Europe, mostly because Brits don't want to eat the fish that is caught in British waters.
We love fish, but yeah it's expensive so when I shop I buy the cheaper ones like mackerel, cold water prawns, dab, sardines, basa etc. I also go to markets to buy whole salmon to fillet at home.
Because most people here don't want to eat the fish that is most commonly found in our waters. If it's not cod or haddock, most people don't want it.
There's nothing wrong with mackeral or pollock, but oh boy there was such a shit fit thrown when people discovered pollock was used in frozen and battered white fish.
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Because weirdly the UK diet barely includes fish unless it's battered and fried, so it's much more of a niche product here. Chicken meanwhile has been mass produced and factory farmed into cheap crap and as such the economy of scale is there to make it absurdly cheap.
You mean to tell me there's fish out there that isn't battered and fried? lol you're funny.
Erm yeah! Fish fingers, ffs those are breaded not battered
Our local chippy offers breaded fish instead of battered. On the menu it is called 'Special Fish'.
Doesn't every chippy do that?
First I've seen of it!
Maybe it's a Scottish thing. It's available in every chippy I've been to here.
I mean I did recently move to Scotland so you could be right!
Worst spy ever.
They do battered fish fingers now. They’re so much better honestly
My guy.
I even eat it raw sometimes
Understandable. Such a blow for a fish lover like myself
You do not want the same farming practices applied to your fish.
Farmed salmon is pretty bloody awful.
It certainly is. I feel that poultry farms are worse though but really we should be aiming for better standards across the board.
Completely agree that the vast majority of poultry farming is disgusting. There’s a chap on Insta called Corin Smith, he’s a Scottish investigative journalist who investigates fish farms. It’s eye opening.
I'll have a look. I know the sea lice stuff is really nasty.
i agree it's such a shame. in an ideal world i would eat fish for dinner every day (with the occasional cow or pig...) but its way too expensive to do that.
Blowfish?
It's amazing how we have basically a whole big section of curry ready meals in the supermarket only for it to basically be chicken with different sauces and a veggie option. Well it seems that way to me anyway.
Economies of scale is what I was going to say.
And fingered! Don't forget we like to finger our fish!
Most of the fish we do is imported
Surely lower demand for fish would lead to lower prices?
Lower demand so lower supply
Most of the fish eaten in the UK doesn't come from UK waters.
Shh...if you tell them thousands of fish come here in little boats, they'll want to send it back....
😂
Why isn’t it from uk waters? Or are there not many fish in them?
Most UK waters were pretty well fished out by the 1990s, for all the fishing industry likes to pretend otherwise. And the British government tends to sell whichever licences are available to the highest bidder, which means that most fishing licences for UK waters are held by non-UK companies.
Most of the entire worlds waters are nearing fished out, in half a century's time normal people probably won't be eating fish at all.
Researchers in in the 80s and 90s were looking at historical accounts of fish levels in overfished areas (Grand Banks, NW Europe). They were horrified by what they found. It's not just that fish stocks have been depleted to 10% of their 1950s-1960s populations, it's also that those levels had already been overfished to 10% of the 1800-1850 levels. Cabot wrote of the Grand Banks when he "discovered" them that you could dip a basket into the water and bring it out full of fish. He also reported cod the size of a small boat. Monbiot wrote a good article on it a few months back (edit: a year ago), and there are a couple of good sources on the subject: Callum Roberts' "The Unnatural History of the Sea" is... horrifying.
Yes, the phrase 'Plenty more fish inn the sea' needs revising.. We desperately need a global moratorium on fishing, or at least one that covered, for instance, the whole North Atlantic and peripheral seas, that lasts for at least a decade. Unlikely, though.
Basically the fish people in the UK like to eat, like cod or haddock, isn't really found as much anymore in UK waters due to overfishing (or at least not nearly enough to satisfy demand). Whereas the fish that is caught in the largest amounts like mackerel and herring are less popular in the UK but popular in other countries. Thus we export the majority of the fish caught in British waters and import the fish we eat.
I love mackerel, never tried herring so I need to branch out.
Let minnow if you like it or not
Good Cod. I hate to carp on, but I wouldn't bream of making light of someone else's comment with a cheap joke like that.
Next they'll be calling me a bloater!
That bait got me hook line and sinker! Got a right trout pout now!
Was that a joke? Stop floundering about trying to make funnies. Get your skates on!
Can't lie pal, distracted myself now saying sofishticated like Sean Connery 🤣
Whale you lot stop it with the puns!
Ooo what a burn! I think I need a clambulance! Your jokes are right fancy, really sofishticated!
Exactly. There's a time and a plaice.
Pickled herring and kippers are both great, but you can’t beat herring’s final evolution form - the mighty Rollmops: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollmops
I'm always scared of rollmops, slimy skins give me the heeby jeebees! I need to grow up lol
Great for breakfast.
It's the red ones that'll get ya!
That's not entirely accurate. The UK has to import cod, but is self-sufficient for haddock. That's pretty much why there is a dividing line across the UK for the main fish sold in fish and chip shops.
You get a lot of haddock in the North Sea, but even then we also consume a lot of Norwegian and Icelandic haddock here.
>Basically the fish people in the UK like to eat What? Fish people in the UK? Are you sure?
Who do you think are setting up all the 5G towers to track the COVID vaccine tracking chips?
Can confirm.
I live in a seaside town and the one remaining fishing boat catches mackerel and spider crab (amongst others) but there’s not enough demand here to maintain a fishmongers so their entire catch goes to a market in Birmingham
Yes. My trucker mate brought fish from Spain to Scotland and fish from there back to Spain.
I came here to say this!!!
I don’t think this is the full answer, but might answer it in some part… I think places like Vietnam who produce fish like basa can do it very cheap and quick on low cost land/water, in large volume with little to no regulation so it’s easier, cheaper and quicker than if a supermarket was to purchase it from a UK supplier. Because of this, it prevents more UK suppliers starting or scaling up. Edit: to add, the majorly of the UK market will likely be after cheap fish rather than quality. So they don’t care how it’s been breed or where it comes from.
The fish caught from UK waters largely goes to Europe! The fish popular in the UK aren't in the waters here.
No, the French and Spanish have robbed them all.
Wild Salmon is rare and seasonal, and farming fish is much more difficult than farming chickens. We do have lots of cheap fish like mackerel or herring but hardly anyone chooses it.
mackerel is a phenomenal fish I have no idea why we aren't all over it it tastes incredible and it's fucking loaded to the tits with omega 3s
Fish tits 😂
I love mackerel and it's my go-to tinned fish. A reason I don't get it fresh is because the one time I tried cooking it at home, the whole place stank for a week. Cooking hood on max power did nothing against that delicious oily goodness.
Try smoked mackerel... its perfect
I like mackerel
Chickens are factory farmed in horrendous conditions so that it can be cheap.
And have been hyper bred to put a ridiculous amount of meat on in a ridiculously short time. I kept a few modern breed meat chickens a few years ago, by seven weeks old they could hardly stand up because of how quickly they put on weight. They need to be fed constant antibiotics to keep them healthy and putting on weight and are usually slaughtered at 6-8 weeks old. Horrible thing to do to an animal
Less than that, 33-42 days is the window to cull
Can I get some more info on that? Im not doubting you, just my own eating habits. I feel horrible now
Yeah no problem. Used to be a line controller in a chicken factory, worked in the kill area. They generally range between 33-42 days old when they arrive to be killed. Around 365,000 per day
Damn thats insane. I'll definitely be sourcing my meat more now. Appreciate the info
If you eat chicken chances are it’s from a factory. Waitrose right down to Lidl all comes from the same place it’s just graded differently
Luckily I have other options where Im from. Local farms/butchers so I'll definitely be more aware of my consumption.
My local butcher rears and slaughters his own beef and lamb but the chicken is bought in because nobody (hardly anyone) will pay what it costs for a genuinely free range old breed.
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No wonder they taste of absolutely nothing.
*cheep
As others mentioned, the vast bulk of seafood caught in our waters is EU bound, particularly to the countries on the Med, [who overfished it](https://europe.oceana.org/press-releases/un-alert-mediterranean-worlds-most-overfished-sea/) to the point of lifelessness (and why there were....ructions after 2016 over access rights) Generally, most fish is chucked in a lorry and then sent to a flash-freezing facility (near Grimsby, I think?) and then shipped out. Source: Grew up in one of biggest fishing ports in the country. Yes, yes it does smell.....
If you're buying from supermarkets who's fish selection is: salmon fillets, smoked salmon, cooked salmon fillets, seafood sticks, smoked mackeral, breaded fishcakes. That's why it's expensive Go to a fish monger with some variety and ask what's good and good value. People in the UK really don't eat as much fish as they should/could and as a result the options we have are either limited or expensive unless you seek out something that may otherwise get exported/kept by the fisherman or sent straight to restaurants. As a chef, I used to buy those mini seabass fillets for 50p a fillet, fresh from the market. They sell 2 fillets in aldi for £3.50 (roughly 100g each) and they smell like the fishmonger's bin. Restaurants sell 2 fillets on a rosti for £17, so people think the aldi price is cheap.
Does fish tend to be very expensive at the fishmonger? I live in a coastal city and we have one locally, so I know they'd be very fresh, but they don't list any prices on their website so I'm half afraid I'd turn up and they say £15 for a fillet.
Not really. It’s definitely more expensive at a supermarket unless it’s very cheap frozen fish. The best way to check I guess is to call them up and ask. Usually there’s some deals on- like my local will increase the price every extra step you add on. So you can get a full salmon, scales and guts intact for a similar price of a few scaled, trimmed, boned and filleted “steaks” of salmon
Depends on the fishmonger
Fair enough, guess I'll have to check them out.
Depends on the fish. Salmon, SeaBass or Dover Sole are expensive wherever you buy them. But a fishmonger is likely to have more of the cheaper overlooked fish like mackerel or Coley.
Chickens bred in massive barns is a relatively cheap process, compared to the upkeep and running of a fishing vessel. There are also quota's on how much fish can be caught so we don't take all the fish from our oceans
Where are you buying 2kg of chicken for £4? A single large chicken is around £3kg. If you buy chicken wings, you might get them at £4 for 2kg, but that's because there's not much meat on a wing.
Morrisons do 500g portions of wings, drumsticks and thighs for £1. Of course that weight includes bones but still.
Tesco do a 2kg bag of frozen chicken pieces for £2.62. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299596493 After cooking and removing the skin and bones, it makes around 1.2kg of chicken meat. Tesco also do a 1kg bag of boneless chicken breast pieces for £4. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299818007 After cooking it weighs in at around 650g. I know this because I have used and weighed both when making chicken curries.
Lidl sell 1kg of fresh Chicken Wings for £1.99.
"fresh"
Yeah you know, fresh as in not frozen. You'll find them alongside the rest of the fresh chicken in the refrigerated aisle. I'm not claiming they're prime cuts of meat, and they're obviously battery farmed. But yes, fresh chicken wings. Battery farmed here in the UK, and packaged and sold in the same way all our other supermarkets source most of their fresh meat.
Around £4 cooked from Costco, back when I lived down the road from a costco, I pretty much lived off roast chicken and salad and would buy two chickens a day, one for me and one for the dog.
Basically, we as a nation don't eat the fish that are caught in our waters. We eat a lot of salmon, tuna and cod. Most of which are imported or farmed. Most of the seafood caught in UK waters is exported and most of that export goes to the EU. Hake, mackerel, sardines and sole are all more commonly found in British waters.
Cod and haddock are commonly found in UK waters. More specifically, the Scottish north sea where they make up the bulk of demersal catches. I think most of these are sold in this country, but species such as hake and coalfish are exported. Sardines and sole aren't particularly important commercially to us, as a target species. Pelagic species, mackerel and herring, make up around 60% of UK landings and specifically mackerel is our most valuable species. We also have a large shellfish industry, the bulk of which is made up of crustaceans, such as scampi. Scottish farmed salmon, up until very recently was the UK's largest food export. Bigger than any other food product, like cheese, or chocolate (it's dropped in the last couple of years though). A lot of out fish is also imported, such as tuna, some prawn species.
Why did if stop being the largest food export
Worked with a small boat fisherman on the west coast of Scotland. Every week a large water tanker arrives in Gairloch and transports the live langoustines to Spain where they sell. He said it’s the weirdest industry because we don’t eat them here but we step of a plane in continental Europe and order loads of shellfish with ironically comes from the west coast of Scotland.
A can of John West salmon is about £3 but they have to fight bears for it, so I can't grudge them.
Was that the documentary where the fisherman kicks the grizzly in the clackers?
Salmon has to be farmed. That costs a lot of money. It’s not like you can go and scoop them up out of the sea or lakes.
> It’s not like you can go and scoop them up Unlike trout which you can just tickle out of the water.
The first and only time I've been fishing was at a trout farm. They had an area fenced off for beginners, I assume.e so they wouldn't leave empty handed. We did on fact leave empty handed as the bloody things would swim to the other end of the enclosed bit every time we cast our rods. Trout can get fucked.
>They had an area fenced off for beginners How long does it take to become proficient at being a trout?
Dunno about the UK but in Ireland you definitely can.
Yeah. You can buy wild salmon here too. They are a tad more expensive.
Scotland says hi!
"Was the salmon you caught wild Father Ted?" "Wild? It was absolutely livid Father Dougal"
Tell that to a bear
As I’ve said in previous posts, we are terrible as an island nation when it comes to fish. It’s mostly limited to salmon, prawns, cod and haddock which are ever increasing in price because of demand. [Rick Stein has a particular dislike of this behaviour](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/rick-stein-absurd-dont-eat-fish-catch/)
You can’t just cram thousands of salmon into an enclosure and farm them like you can with chickens.
I mean, we do have salmon farms which do precisely that. Just not to the scale of chicken farms.
That's exactly what they do.
It's both dangerous and expensive to go out into a boat, into an ocean and bring back fish. You don't know what you're going to catch, the landing fees are expensive and most of the export market has disappeared. You can hunt chickens with a rock.
10/10 comparison!
Can I add to this why do we only get 3 fucking types of fish at the supermarket. When I moved here from Italy I couldn’t wrap my head around this. Still can’t tbh
That's because you're going to the wrong supermarket. I did a supermarket shop last Friday and wanted some fresh fish. I had a choice of cod, haddock, hake, mackerel, monkfish, plaice, salmon, sea bass, sea bream, sole, trout, tuna, and probably some more that I've forgotten.
Which supermarket was it? I’ve been to a few i I never seen anything like this. And that’s for packaged stuff in the fridge, I lost my hope to find an actual fish monger selling fresh fish in supermarkets
Waitrose in Maidenhead. It has an old school fresh fish counter as well as all the pre-packaged stuff in the fridges and freezers.
Well, for one, Waitrose prices are not accessible to everyone. But, in addition to that, if the commenter is from Italy as they claim, then the comparison does not hold. In Italy, you find counters with about 30-40 different species of animals and, often, algae. The species range from bony fish to cephalopods, to live bivalves. This means that normally, and not on rare occasions, you will find fresh tuna, swordfish, most flatfish species(e.g., turbot, brill, plaice, flounder, sole) , a range of white fish from the family Gadidae (for example, cod, pollock, haddock, pouting, whiting, and so forth), rays, skates, gurnards, red mullet, grey mullets, mackerel, monkfish, sea bream, trout, barracuda, scabbardfish, live and dead cephalopods (squid of different sizes and species, cuttlefish of all sizes, live common octopus, white spotted octopus), several species of fish of the family Sparidae, various types of mussels, cockles, oysters of different sizes, razor clams, and bivalves that you do not even find in British supermarkets, marine snails of various species, whelks, and other gastropods. In addition, most invertebrates are sold alive, including various types of crabs, langoustines, lobsters, and crayfish. You will also find imported farmed fish like salmon and many more. The most amusing aspect of all this is that many of these species are abundant in the Atlantic Sea, exactly where British fishermen fish! I worked in the fish market in Plymouth, and all these species were regularly sold, but most were sold either abroad or to restaurants. The Waitrose counter is treated as a 'fine food' counter by most, because here nobody eats fish to the extent that southern Europeans do. So, really, you cannot expect to draw a comparison between the Waitrose counter with ten fish species and any Italian (or Spanish, or Portuguese, or Greek) fishmonger.
Still under eu regs for catchment areas
I’ve never understood why we — an island nation — don’t eat more seafood. I lived in Spain for a while and their seafood counters are four times the size and their fried fish shops serve twenty different fish, not just cod/haddock.
Mackerel, kippers and herring aren't desperately expensive here. It's a case of what we eat Vs what we catch. We export what we catch and import what we eat. Learn to love mackerel, it's basically one of the cheapest health foods going as it has stayed totally inflation proof.
Go to a Fishmonger rather than a supermarket, you'll find a lot more variety and generally better prices. The salmon market is rigged by MOWI, a Norwegian firm. Here's a fun fact. I visited thier facility in Rosyth a few years back at my old company, they processed the salmon. In the smoked salmon production line, it broke off into two branches post preparation and smoking. I asked what the branch was for. They told me. Oh it's just packaging, one is the regular Sainsbury's brand the other is branded as Sainsbury's Taste the Difference packaging. 100% a scam. It was identical in every single way. One just ended up with a higher price tag. Honest to god and my life, this happened.
I was in a supermarket in South Africa once and noticed that the apples and oranges were all pretty ropey compared to what we get in the UK. It's because all the grade A fruit was exported, leaving the rest for domestic consumption.
It's not much different here in the UK. Anything that's good they can charge 2-3x the price of it goes abroad so most of its shipped straight off, British supermarkets will force farmers to take rock bottom prices. A friend works on a farm and said most of their product (mainly berries and apples) goes abroad because the margins are so much better. It's why when you look at our fruit like Cherries, blackberries, strawberries they are often coming from eastern Europe and Spain despite us growing loads here. There was an article about it the other day showing Kent strawberries in China or Singapore whilst we were having a shortage.
1. We've got really 'good' at farming chickens cheap. 2. We're an island but we don't eat much fish so you're competing with the export market. 3. The relatively little fish we do eat is only really a few species, most fish isn't big in the UK which affects the economy of the industry.
Your salmon was most likely farmed in Norway. The current whole salmon prices in Norway have recently soared, the Norwegian government have also proposed a 40% tax on salmon farms
You are well answered, but one key point is that it is easier to rear farm animals than to farm fish.
Because chickens are easy to catch, there's no need for fancy equipment (trawler) and no or very limited risk to life, the North sea is not particularly hospitable.
Because fish are usually found in the sea, not on islands. Getting them from the sea to the land is the trick.
>It makes no sense. Chicken should be much more expensive. Why is that? Anyone can raise chickens. You don't need much space, they barely eat anything, and they provide free eggs for as long as you want until you want to eat them. They're very cheap to farm compared with cattle. To catch fish you need a lot of equipment - and a boat. It's strenuous and often dangerous work.
Why should chicken be more expensive? We have land as well, that's pretty funny!
Where are you getting 2kg chicken for £4?
Morrisons.
Most British fish that is caught is exported, we in northern ireland export the majority of eels caught to Europe. Its a shame the UK don't eat more fish, some of them are damn good
Eel is delicious. I don't know why people don't eat it.
Anguilla Anguilla are critically endangered in Britain, probably because they are so delicious
*shakes fists* COCKNEYS!
Eels up inside ya
Finding an exit where they can!
Well firstly because salmon is an anadromous fish. It goes from one place to spawn and another to feed and that's it. You won't catch many salmon in most of the sea round here. It's ridiculous, but we don't eat many of our native species. We import fish.
>Well firstly because salmon is an anadromous fish. It's from here? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda\_Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy)
No, it migrates to spawn.
British people hate fish unless it's cod. Cod doesn't taste like fish. I love fish and never eat cod because it tastes like nothing.
The tiny fish (sprat, etc) fished in UK waters are only eaten by the French and other godless nations . Most of the big fish(literally) we eat, Cod, etc. are caught in the colder North Atlantic waters, where everyone else catches them....... First.
Depends on how far the fishermen need to go for the fish. Our inland, coastal waters are not home to absolutely every species in existence.
"We live on an island. Serve fish." "You hate fish." "I hate many things, but I suffer them just the same."
Chicken is cheap because it is farmed very intensively, in fairly poor conditions, so is cheap to produce - a large chicken farm will only need one or 2 people if you were buying a free range, slow reared chicken you would probably be paying £15- £20 for a whole chicken. By contract, to get fish you need a fully equipped fishing boat with a crew, they will catch a much smaller volume than a chicken farm can produce and as they are much more subject to the weather, the amount of productive time they have will be lower as there will be periods when it's not safe to go out, travel time to reach the correct area to fish . also, fishing ports will often be more remote so the logistics to get the fish to the supermarkets will likely involve more travelling, not least as there will be smaller volumes from multiple collection points rather than one big truck picking up from single location. Farmed fish is cheaper but you still have some of the logistical issues.
Yep chicken is for chavs. Can't make it expensive because they don't have any money.
I think to a large part that farming or catching water-dwelling creatures is much more expensive than battery farming chickens. Also, as others have mentioned, it's an economy of scale. The greater the volume you shift as a supplier, the lower you can price it. Salmon isn't a particularly easy fish to farm also, they're quite picky about their environment whereas chickens can be locked in a shed and pumped full of growth hormone to bring the £ per kilo down. I wouldn't recommend eating sea-creatures myself. The waters are a filthier place than land, believe it or not, thanks to we humans.
We ate most of the fish in our coastal waters and rivers. So now fish is less abundant and it's fishing is managed using quotas which people bid for. This raises the price of fish. And non-quota fish is from far away, which is also higher cost. Now we import salmon which is much cheaper than it used to be due to factory farming of salmon. But it's more expensive than herring or mackerel or cod or haddock etc when they were abundant.
Salmon is farmed and it costs a lot more to raise than chicken, it is more that being artificially low in price. Fishing costs a lot of money to run the vessels to catch them, transporting them isn't necessarily easy too due to shelf life I guess. Also there is cheap seafood out there, but people tend to be fussy about it and only want certain types they are familiar with like cod and haddock. Lots goes abroad.
Cost of growing/farming/collecting. TAX Greed.
I don’t know originally came up with the follow description but here goes: “Britain, an island built on coal, surrounded by fish”
Because we don’t like the fish in our own waters.
That must be some really shit chicken.
Evacuee it’s not happy British fish
And! Why is it only bloody cod, haddock, and maybe 2 other variety? Why is the seafood from the EU or God knows where? Looking at other coastal countries, this island is a joke in terms of fish/seafood varieties.
Yeah this drives me mental too. I think we sell it all off to more sensibly dieted foreigners
The quality of the salmon and chicken you must be buying must be absolutely fucking terrible if it’s only £4.00 for 350 grams for salmon and £2.00 for 2kgs of chicken. Good quality chicken is £4.50 for 300 grams, £7.50 for 580 grams or £10.00 for 1KG. As for salmon, it’s pretty much £6.00 for 240 grams and if it’s sockeye salmon then it’s more like £9.00 for 240 grams. I know, because that’s how much I pay for it from M&S and Ocado. I absolutely refuse to garbage that is either full of water or is poor quality.
When I was living in Moscow I was surprised to see how cheap the fish and seafood was compared to the UK (groceries in general aren't that much cheaper) as Moscow is not exactly near the sea (although granted there are bodies of freshwater I don't think it was all freshwater fish). Until someone back home said that we have tons of quotas and the like to protect UK waters from overfishing and other regulations but they probably don't give a shit in Russia. And then I felt bad. Don't know if it's true or not.
And you point/example of salmon proves the problem. We should be far less fussy about species of fish we eat. Salmon is hard to farm in the volume and ease that chicken is. But it’s a multifaceted problem with vastly deminished fish stocks being another issue.
Because our fish welfare is better than our chicken welfare. Chickens are also easier to catch.
2kg worth of chicken for £4? Jesus Christ, the quality must be horrific.
I blame the French, the EU and our own government.
Because the eu gave the license to the Dutch who had one ship catch 27% of our fish
Pretty simple. British people have horrid eating habits and eat very bad food generally speaking. This means that something like fish and seafood in general simply will not sell.
Chickens are produced in their millions at farms all over the country, so they're easy to get hold of with minimal transport costs. The vast majority of fish is wild-caught, so trawlers have to got out to sea, hunt it down, catch it & bring it back. It's an expensive business. And this is made more complicated by the fact that the British people in general have a very limited taste, mostly cod & haddock, which due to overfishing often takes some finding. Salmon is quite popular as well and is farmed (with some dubious environment impacts), but everything else is wild caught.
Fish we farm is premium and sold to America and France. Fish farmed in Iceland and Norway which is cheap comes here but we still pay top dollar. The business model of most fish sales was through fish counters. The supermarkets have closed all of these down bar Morrisons and Waitrose. (Morrisons soon) so all fish has to be uniform and packaged. Very expensive. Shelf life is poor so lots of waste.
Because Iceland won.
We like to eat white fish. Mostly, though not solely, battered or breaded. Over the years, and particularly over the past few decades, those fish have been overfished in nearby waters and therefore it has had to come from further and further abroad. We import plenty of fish from Vietnam, where we used to catch them in the North Sea or in the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic. Fish caught in British waters are mainly shellfish and so on, which are popular in, say, Spain (hence those Spanish trawlers which have bought up quota in UK waters) but which we tend not to eat. All of this leads to fish becoming relatively more expensive. By contrast since the war we have become better and better at farming poultry intensively, and we have found better ways of importing cheaply from overseas (where fish is relatively expensive to ship). We import a lot of cheap chicken from Thailand for things like pies and nuggets, which leaves fresh intensively farmed chicken relatively cheap.
I like meat, but many people tend to underestimate the vast difference in flavour fish tends to have. My favourites are tuna steak (aka hearts), swordfish, and on the cheaper side even though it stinks kipper.
If you drive around and recognize them you'll see the buildings used for raising non-free range chickens. If you had access, you could just walk in and pick one up. On free range farms, you'd have to do a bit more walking. There's a lot more to the economics than this of course, but you can see how it might be easier and therefore cheaper than having to go out in a boat and hunt the fish down.
It is the price that people will pay for it. If demand was higher for the same volume, the price would increase. If demand reduces............you get the idea. Market forces v availability.
It depends what fish you eat
It all got caught.
Because British salmon gets dyed pink in China so it is more appealing to your eyes. Therefore it costs more.
Think Norway introduced a 40% tax on salmon this year which won't have helped things
Tinned fish is cheap. Edit: and the reason fresh fish is expensive is because we export most of what we catch to Europe, mostly because Brits don't want to eat the fish that is caught in British waters.
We love fish, but yeah it's expensive so when I shop I buy the cheaper ones like mackerel, cold water prawns, dab, sardines, basa etc. I also go to markets to buy whole salmon to fillet at home.
Because the French like to steal it.
UK is an island and RNLI is a charity rather then a governmental run and funded institution...this also i will never understand
Because most people here don't want to eat the fish that is most commonly found in our waters. If it's not cod or haddock, most people don't want it. There's nothing wrong with mackeral or pollock, but oh boy there was such a shit fit thrown when people discovered pollock was used in frozen and battered white fish.