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Fish forever?
Fish n' chips
Tapas tree
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Fish n' chips - adding salt to the wound
Decades ago, in retaliation for us (affectionately, of course) calling the French 'frogs', our European cousins immediately came back with … 'le roast beef.' And, overnight, a cross-border slanging match was born based on the eating habits of a nation. How we laughed? Well, we laughed more than the 'sauerkraut'. Germans, did anyway.
 So, pity our gastronomic neighbours and the fun they have missed out all the time that our best selling take-away dish has been fish & chips. Surely 'le haddock' or 'le cods' would have got more of a rise from us, so to speak.
Maybe though, they couldn't quite believe that the Brits actually tucked away 245 million portions of fish & chips each year. Yup, that's right! Just over 8,000 fish & chip shops account for the sale of £478 million worth of seafood. A thought that might sting the same way salt and vinegar can in a cut.
In fact how many of us would believe that these deep fried fillets included fish on the IUCN - World Conservation Union's list of threatened or endangered species?
Recently the Marine Conservation Society told us that cod in UK waters are close to collapse and that only those caught by hand line in Icelandic waters are sustainable.
Chances are the fish on the chip shop menu now come from the Faeroe Islands, Greenland, the Baltics or even as far as New Zealand. It's certainly not from the West Coast of Canada since the country has now banned cod fishing there and doesn't expect stocks to recover for between 15-18 years.
Perhaps another question is do we care that our own fish stocks have collapsed, that our UK seas can no longer feed us, or that our favourite and most traditional fish supper is now imported?
Obviously not. And that is why the race is on and the humble cod is being hunted half way around the globe, just so we can wrap them in paper and douse them in ketchup.
How about a portion of rock salmon, then? Nah, ever since we call the spiny dogfish (a member of the shark family), 'rock salmon', it never stood a chance and is now listed as threatened. Haddock? Try again, another fish that is listed as threatened. Okay, skate? Yet another example of the UK's dwindling shark population.
Certainly it's a difficult concept to grasp, which would explain why a friend was shocked and dismayed at his colleague's suggestion - the day after cod's eminent extinction last hit our headlines - that they should get fish & chips at lunch time … before it all goes for good! It will all go for good.
That's what extinction is about. And it's not just sharks, marlin and swordfish that face extinction, but proper eating fish too - because we're too bloody greedy.
So, if you're going to eat fish & chips, maybe you'd be good enough to ask where in the world the fish came from and how it was caught or, better still, order a double portion of chips instead.
Pass the salt.
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