Fish and seafood vegan options to storm UK as government avoids topic

Vegan alternatives for fish and seafood are set to take the UK market by storm to offer a strong, more sustainable substitute.

Plant-based filet-o-fish burgers, smoked salmon and prawns will be among new alternative protein options, after plant milks and meat replacements sparked further investment in vegan food.

The range of products, known as ‘faux fish’ according to The Guardian, will see seafood like prawns made from peas and flaky fish fillets from jackfruit.

Supermarket giant Tesco is set to expand its plant-based range with products such as Thai-style fish cakes, New England-style crab cakes, Quorn fishless fingers and fishless burgers – and promises to price them well so that customers can make “easy swaps”.

Meanwhile, Dutch brand Vegan Zeastar intends to “veganise every dish that involves fish to fight the destruction of our oceans”.

And this month, Nestlé launched Vrimp, an alternative for shrimps made from seaweed and peas.

Mark Schneider, Nestlé’s chief executive, said consumer choices are a “big part of the equation” in lowering our carbon footprint, ahead of the Cop26 climate summit.

Govt ‘won’t ask people to eat less meat’. It will focus on nuclear power.

It comes as the government will not ask UK people to eat less meat when publishing its new decarbonisation plan next week, according to the Financial Times.

Instead, the government will focus only on putting nuclear power at the centre of UK’s net zero emissions strategy.

Meanwhile, this week it emerged that some of the UK’s most popular dairy brands are linked to deforestation in Brazil, a critical problem in the fight against climate change.

Anna Jones, of Greenpeace UK, told ITV News: “People aren’t really aware that their cheese has deforestation in it.

“The reason why it matters is because these forest that have been destroyed are critically important for our climate and for planetary health. If we don’t have those forests, then our climate will tip into a kind of chaos.”

Figures show Britain imports around 2.6 million tonnes of soya for animal feed every year, and almost a third comes from Brazil.

UK meat and dairy companies

Last month, it emerged carbon emissions caused by 20 meat and dairy companies are higher than the emissions of Germany, France or Britain.

Scientific research has revealed that rich countries such as the UK need massive cuts to meat and dairy consumption to tackle the climate crisis.

But the industry received more than £348 billion from 2015 until 2020 from 2,500 investment companies, banks and pension funds, based on findings by Friends of the Earth and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung group.

According to The Guardian, this means meat production could increase by tens of millions of tonnes every year – taking up massive parts of agricultural land and causing deforestation to make space for livestock.

REVEALED: The UK dairy brands linked to deforestation in Brazil

Andra Maciuca

Andra is a multilingual, award-winning NQJ senior journalist and the UK’s first Romanian representing co-nationals in Britain and reporting on EU citizens for national news. She is interested in UK, EU and Eastern European affairs, EU citizens in the UK, British citizens in the EU, environmental reporting, ethical consumerism and corporate social responsibility. She has contributed articles to VICE, Ethical Consumer and The New European and likes writing poetry, singing, songwriting and playing instruments. She studied Journalism at the University of Sheffield and has a Masters in International Business and Management from the University of Manchester. Follow her on: