When it comes to fish, the Newfies know best

Remember the story a week or two ago about food wastage in the UK? Apparently about a third of all the food bought in this country gets thrown out and winds up in the landfill. Aside from the evident immorality of this, it's a big contributor to greenhouse gases: the carbon dioxide produced each year by rotting food is equivalent to the emissions of five million cars (or one Jeremy Clarkson).

This week's food waste "scandal" takes us to the other end of the human food chain: to conform with EU limits on their landings of codfish, fishermen are throwing out as much as 60% of the fish they haul up onto their boats. They claim that the cod stocks in the North Sea have recovered sharply, so the quotas should be increased.

The fact that so much cod is now being netted as a by-product of attempts to catch permitted species such as Dover sole tends to prove their point. But even if they're exaggerating, even if cod stocks remain below ideal levels, it's hard to see who (apart from the seagulls) benefits from throwing dead fish back into the water, rather than bringing them ashore to sell. As long as the rules on net sizes are being properly enforced, there can be no harm in allowing this. In fact, as one fishermen's spokesman said today, the current practice is going to put more species in peril. The fishermen have to keep netting more and more fish, and throwing back more and more dead cod, in order to make a decent living from the permitted species.

The collapse of the cod stocks in European waters mirrors similar events on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland a couple of decades ago. The fishing industry of Newfoundland, once the province's primary source of employment, was eviscerated, with whole communities ceasing to exist. But even at the worst of the crisis, the fishermen were always allowed to land and sell whatever "by-catch" of cod happened to end up in their nets. Mind you, it was always amazing, when you ate out in St John's in those days, to realise just how big that by-catch could be! Still, a little bit of cheating is surely better than outright waste.