First Facebook, now Twitter

Having successfully managed to get Facebook to connect to WordPress, will this Twitter feed work now?

First blog to test the new site

As I wait for the world’s DNS servers to refresh, which will put our new site live, this is just to test the connectability between my blogs and our business Facebook page. If all goes well, our Twitter feed will also be updated in sequence.
Here goes…

MSC accredited Scottish Haddock – Raymond Blanc’s blog

A few weeks ago, I was fishing for lobster in Pittenweem, Fife. While there were plenty of lobsters in those waters, I was alarmed to see that the white fish such as haddock, cod and whiting were not present; they had gone. But today, light the beacons, sound the trumpets and fire off a celebratory rocket or two. Just over two and a half years ago I met Mike Berthet of M & J Seafoods (http://www.mjseafood.com/), who was talking in Oxford about a fish supply scheme. I challenged him about whether it was really eco-friendly to use Scottish haddock. To my real surprise, Mike said there were plenty of those particular fish in the North Sea. Then to show how confident he was, he flew Gary Jones and me to Peterhead, where, on a perfectly ordinary morning, we counted 7,500 boxes of haddock for sale!

Well that did indeed prove there was a lot of Scottish haddock around. The snag however, is that it did not prove was that this haddock was caught in a sustainable fashion.

But this morning, in what is really a fantastic event for the UK and for Scottish fisheries, Mike is bringing me the first landed Scottish Fisheries Sustainable Accredited haddock, and I will be cooking the first Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Accredited haddock at Le Manoir for lunch.

They say good news comes in pairs. Well, the UK’s GDP for the summer quarter was twice what was expected; and North Sea haddock is the first Scottish whitefish to be certified with the gold standard of sustainability. Last year the catch was 34.7 thousand tonnes and it was worth £34.2m to the Scottish economy. As Alex Salmond, the very appropriately named first minister of Scotland says, haddock is of huge economic importance to the entire UK, as it ranks fourth in volume and retail sale of in shot up year on year to 30th September by 5.4% in value and 17.7% in volume.

The hoops the Scottish fisheries have had to jump though to are truly formidable – these are serious, difficult to meet criteria – and the certification body is truly independent. So this is a huge victory for our food supply, for common sense, and for our purses and appetites. Haddock is, after all, one of our most delicious species, a complete joy to cook and a fish absolutely beloved by the British consumer. Before you hug your local chippy, just check that what he’s frying tonight is MSC accredited North Sea Haddock. But this is a win-every-which-way situation – and heaven knows we need a few of those just now.

Scottish fishing vessels arrested