Lia ní Aodha, 16 October 2026

When we think of fishing, we often think of fisheries management – fish as a quota, rather than fish as food. But along with management, all kinds of other policy decisions, from immigration and offshore development to energy, climate and food, shape the sector. In the UK, these decisions are spread across several departments and administrations, and unlike other food-producing sectors, fishing has no long-term strategy or roadmap to ensure they are coherent.

Today, Friday 16 October, is World Food Day. This year’s theme, ‘Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow’, is about how forward-thinking solutions can help ensure everyone has access to nutritious food, while safeguarding the planet for future generations. Even though enough food is produced globally to feed everyone, the FAO highlights the stark reality that in 2025, 645 million people faced hunger and 2.69 billion could not afford a healthy diet (1).

Amartya Sen long ago showed that people rarely go hungry because there isn’t enough food, but rather because they can’t access or command enough of it (2). Food security is as much (and sometimes more) about entitlements as availability – who can produce, buy, earn or access food, and on what terms. As well as economics or innovation, these are questions of politics, and this point also holds true at home.

At household level, the Food Foundation estimates that around 6.5 million adults and 2.2 million children in the UK live in food insecure households – driven by high costs and low wages, rather than empty shelves (3). While the UK is currently food secure at the national level, the Government has acknowledged that the conditions underpinning this are changing. However, food experts warn that the UK has no plan to feed people in a crisis (4).

How does this relate to fishing and seafood?

Blue foods (fish, shellfish and seaweeds) play a key role in global food security. According to the FAO, fisheries and aquaculture support more than 600 million livelihoods and provide at least a fifth of the animal protein intake for more than 3 billion people, globally (5). Beyond protein, blue foods are a comparatively low-carbon nutritional powerhouse, rich in nutrients that can be hard to find elsewhere – particularly for children.

In the UK, however, blue foods have struggled to get onto the food policy and resilience planning agenda – and sustainable UK seafood struggles to get onto more plates at home. From an already low base, amidst a cost of living crisis, household fish purchases per person fell by 15 per cent between 2020 and 2023 (6). We export much of our catch and import a lot of what we eat. However, recent shocks have shown that supply chains can’t be taken for granted, making a viable domestic fishing fleet that can provide dependable flows of sustainable seafood a form of food insurance.

Innovation certainly matters as part of this story. And across UK fisheries, we have seen advances in gear selectivity, fuel-efficient vessel design and welfare-improving technologies, alongside collaborative innovations in fisheries management through the UK’s Fisheries Management Plans, and multi-stakeholder coalitions like Fisheries Innovation & Sustainability, Clean Catch and Fishing into the Future.

But, as with food, entitlements are central to the production of food from the sea. They determine who gets to fish for what and where, who gets displaced as competition for marine space intensifies, who can access capital to modernise, how much of the value of the catch stays in coastal communities (and how much makes it to UK plates), and who gets a seat at the table. These are all political questions which are currently being answered in the absence of a strategic plan for the sector.

To address this, the APPG on Fisheries recently published an Action Plan for a Thriving and Sustainable UK Fishing Industry that sets out 38 recommendations. Among them, the cross-party Group has called on Government to:

• Recognise fishing and seafood as a strategic food-producing sector and part of the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure, with a cross-government strategy within the next twelve months;
• Fully represent seafood in food security assessments, including the 2027 UK Food Security Report;
• Ensure that decisions on marine space weigh their impact on fishing livelihoods and domestic food production;
• Address the acute operational challenges affecting UK fishing and seafood, particularly labour and energy costs;
• Use public procurement and a sustained “two-a-week” campaign to get more UK seafood onto plates at home.

For UK fishing and seafood, innovating today to nourish tomorrow needs political commitment and action – asking who gets to produce food and who gets to eat it, and making sure food from the sea is part of today’s plans for the future.

Read the APPG on Fisheries’ Action Plan for a Thriving and Sustainable UK Fishing Industry to explore the 38 recommendations for securing a more resilient future for UK fishing and seafood.

References:

1. FAO, https://www.fao.org/world-food-day/en
2. Sen A. (1981). An essay on entitlement and deprivation. Poverty and Famines.
3. The Food Foundation, https://foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/food-insecurity-tracking
4. Partridge J. (2026). British government ‘complacent about food as a national security matter’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/05/british-government-food-national-security-crisis-shortages
5. FAO (2026). The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026 – Blue Transformation: turning vision into impact, Rome. https://www.fao.org/publications/fao-flagship-publications/the-state-of-world-fisheries-and-aquaculture/en
6. Defra (2024). United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024: Theme 4: Food Security at Household Level, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024-theme-4-food-security-at-household-level