Top 10 stories that defined Europe’s 2014 seafood industry

2014 proved another remarkable year for Europe’s seafood industry. As December draws to a close, let’s take a look back at 10 key stories from the past 12 months that shaped the sector.

10. After almost four years of protests, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight campaign came to an end this year. However, the campaigning chef couldn’t resist one last dig at Tesco, the United Kingdom’s biggest grocer. Following the first series of Fish Fight in 2011, which highlighted the lack of transparency in canned tuna labeling, Tesco switched its own-brand canned tuna to 100 percent pole-and-line. But at the same time, it introduced a budget product containing purse seine-caught tuna. Fearnley-Whittingstall described the move as “tragic,” saying Tesco didn’t want its brand to be associated with purse seining yet “they still want to sell tuna caught by environmentally unsound methods.” While the retailer had “fulfilled the letter of their obligation,” he questioned where the “spirit of its promise” had gone. Adding to Tesco’s tuna woes, it was also named the worst ranked supermarket on Greenpeace U.K.’s “Tinned Tuna League 2014.”