Call to net west coast scallop fraudsters

Published on Friday 22 April 2011 19:09

THEY feature on the menus of most of Scotland's top restaurants and are prized by diners for their sweet white flesh.

But marine campaigners are now calling for an accreditation scheme to be introduced to stamp out the growing practice of passing off scallops dredged from the seabed as the more succulent and expensive hand-dived variety.

Practitioners of the traditional diving method, which sees only mature scallops selected to allow smaller ones to grow, warn that the provenance of many west coast shellfish being sold in restaurants may be in doubt.

Backed by one of Scotland's leading chefs, the Michelin-starred Tom Kitchin, they believe an accreditation programme will allow restaurateurs and consumers to know for certain that the shellfish they are serving and eating have been caught by hand.

Only five per cent of scallops in Scotland are caught by divers, with the remaining 95 per cent harvested by dredgers, which drag steel hooks and chain mats across the seabed, taking everything in their path. More than 90 Scottish boats feed a trade currently worth 1 million a year which is expanding due to environmental restrictions on white fish fleets.

With tensions rising, prominent members of the diving community have decided to speak out against fishermen seeking to cash in by making the false claims. A kilo of dredged king scallop meat costs around 22 while the dived-kind costs 30.

Guy Grieve set up the Ethical Shellfish Company on the Isle of Mull with his wife Juliet last year. He supplies several top restaurants in Britain and said that "everyone is being ripped off" by the practice. Grieve said: "When I take my scallops into some of the best restaurants in London, I deal with some very, very fine people, but they have all had dredged up scallops come their way.

"One of the motivations we had when naming our firm is we really believe it's time a true ethic of respect entered the game. A fishing license is a very powerful thing as it means you can go out into this great wilderness."

Alistair Sinclair, secretary of the Scottish Creel and Divers Association, said the problem required an investigation by consumer watchdog bodies. "One of the concerns divers have nowadays is that every man and his dog seems to be selling hand-dived scallops. You have to doubt the provenance. If the scallops have been dredged, the meat is gritty."

It is generally accepted that trawled scallops are not as good as hand-dived ones. Because they are taken young, they are smaller and contain more grit as result of the sandy seabed being churned up by the dredgers.Hand-dived scallops have grown for a longer in waters with fresh currents and contain more nutrients.

Robert Younger, a solicitor who works for campaign group Fish Legal in Scotland, said: "Fraud is fraud. If you're passing something off as a Rolex when it's a cheap watch, that is fraudulent and is a criminal offence. If there is a problem of mis-selling, then clearly to protect the value for the divers. There should be a scheme so that they are not essentially being defrauded."

Kitchin backed plans which would make clear to restaurants and consumers how and where scallops were caught.

He said: "I've heard that some people are putting the dredged scallops in big tanks to clean out sand. It's ludicrous. It seems some people in the industry will do anything to make a penny.

"I only buy scallops from one supplier and they cost me an arm and a leg, but my customers can taste the difference. I charge 18 a portion for my hand-dived scallops but they are of exceptional quality.

"If I ever got a scallop with sand in it, it'd go straight back and I'd want my money back. It's such a big industry, and there should be some kind of certification like there is with wild salmon."

Many in the industry believe the problem could be at least partly addressed by tougher regulation. However Richard Lochhead, the former SNP secretary for rural affairs and the environment, has said the ecological case for restricting dredging is unproven.

There are growing calls for the reintroduction of a ban on bottom-dredging within a three-mile limit of the coastline. A new body Save the Clyde Trust is aiming to implement such a measure in the Firth of Clyde.

Grieve, who said that regulation, not a "vendetta" against fishermen was required, added: "If dredging was restricted to three miles offshore, we'd be in a much better position whereby the small, fertile shallow fringes that surround the coastline would be left intact.

"We've got a third-world situation going on right here in a developed country and we're in danger of destroying Scotland's last great wilderness."

John Hermse, secretary of the Scallop Association, said: "I have no awareness of mis-selling but what we do know is that an awful lot of dived scallops do not go through any tested process and are sold illegally."

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "Scallop dredging is already tightly regulated in Scotland. Any changes to the regulatory framework surrounding this practice will be for the incoming administration to consider."