There's something fishy going on in British supermarkets, according to the London Times. Supposedly "fresh" fish on sale there have been held in deep frozen storage for nearly a year.
Packages of mackerel on sale in one Waitrose store last week had been caught no later than March of this year and then held in warehouses before being thawed for sale. Similarly, a Sainsbury's in Whitechapel, East London, was displaying whole mackerel laid out on ice with the small print on an adjacent notice saying it had been "previously frozen."
There was no indication how old it was, but a sign said it had been accredited by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Trouble is, the northeast Atlantic mackerel fishery lost its MSC accreditation in March -- so the fish must have been caught before that. In the same store, packaged fillets of six otherspecies, including tuna, cod and haddock, carried notices that they too may have been frozen and stored, again without saying for how long.
The practice of holding fish frozen in giant warehouses, often for weeks or many months, is widespread, the Times said, explaining that sometimes this is because a species has a short "season," so fishermen catch as many as they can while allowed. The fish are then frozen for release to retailers on demand. This happens with mackerel. In other cases, species may be stored frozen because they have to be transported a long way or they may have been bought in bulk while prices were low.
At one large Tesco store all the packaged fish was labeled "may have been previously frozen," without saying when it was caught. A Tesco spokesman said its fresh fish counters also sold fish that had been frozen: "We use a limited supply of previously frozen fish to help maintain the quality of the product and because, in doing so, we help to maintain fish stocks. These are labelled so customers have the information they need." However, when asked how old its fish might be when sold, the spokesman would say only: "The length of storage varies according to the species and method of freezing."
