Captain Birdseye: Make piracy history

I just sent this letter to UniLever because of its lack of committment to eradicating and handling the problem with pirate fishing of Baltic cod.

This illegal fishing is overfishing!

Attention: Dierk Peters, Kees van der Graaf, Patrick Cescau

"Reports published earlier this year show that more than 25% of cod from the Barents sea has been caught illegally. Just last week Greenpeace revealed the shocking news that about 30% of cod caught in the Baltic sea are also illegally caught above quota. Additionally, ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea) the EU Commission's scientific advisory body, is calling for zero catch quotas in the Baltic.

At the end of September the European Fish Processor's Association meets in a summit on pirate fisheries, in order to bring this disastrous situation under control. All major companies present at the meeting have made commitments publicly on steps they are taking to ensure their products are free of illegal cod.

This is not the case for Iglo and Birds Eye. There has been no public commitment by your company on steps taken against pirate fish in your products. Your company makes enough fishsticks every year to stretch around the equator - that's a lot of fishsticks! Currently your suppliers source cod from both the Barents and Baltic, and as a result you cannot guarantee that the fish in the products we eat is not caught illegally.

I realise you are in the process of selling your Birds Eye and Iglo brands in Europe to Permira, an investment company. Before the sale is finalised you should publicly commit to making sure they are buying a clean product, and ensure that the rest of your frozen food brands are free of illegal cod too.

This is why I am urgently asking you to publicly commit to the following minimum steps against illegal cod before this summit:

To buy no cod from:
- vessels listed as pirate vessels (by Norway or NEAFC)
- vessels under flags of convenience
- ports that do not report landings to Norway as well as Russia
- the Baltic due to high illegality and complete over fishing of the stock

There is an imminent threat that the summit will be a failure, at the cost of the last Atlantic cod stocks, if Unilever does not clearly signal its preparedness to fully and seriously engage in this issue beforehand."

You can do the same at:
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/ocean-defenders/take-action/stop-stolen-baltic-cod