Fishermen fearing fresh crisis over cheap 'cod'

Published on Sunday 4 October 2009 22:15

A CHEAP new alternative from Vietnam could hit Scottish cod fishermen, causing a massive slump in prices, an MEP has warned.

Some chip shops have already used panga, also known as the Vietnamese River Cobbler, as a substitute to cod and haddock.

Marketed at about 2 a pound, it has already proved so popular in France and Spain that fishermen there complain sales of their own catches are in grave decline.

Now a leading Scots MEP has warned it won't be long before a similar crisis hits fishermen here.

"A price slump could affect fresh-caught cod and haddock, and even farmed salmon and trout, as shoppers turn to panga and chips," said Struan Stevenson, the senior vice-president of the European Parliament's Fisheries Committee.

He is also warning there are serious concerns over the purity of the water and the way some producers are rearing panga.

"Panga are being bred in huge industrial fish farms in the Mekong River of Vietnam," he said. "Recent tests conducted by food safety scientists in Spain found eight out of ten samples of the fish were seriously polluted with dangerous toxins.

"Vietnamese factories along its banks daily pump thousands of tonnes of contaminants into its slow-flowing waters. As a result, the water is teeming with bacteria and poisoned with industrial effluent.

"Processing factories where the panga are filleted and frozen use this contaminated water for washing and freezing the fish before exporting them."

Worse still, some reports insist Vietnamese fish farmers are injecting the female panga with a hormone to encourage female fish to lay up to 500,000 eggs at a time and to grow more quickly.