Food security and safety in fisheries governance: A case study on Baltic herring

One of the objectives of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is to increase the contribution of fisheries to fish food availability and self-sufficiency. Still, the use of catch is often a secondary concern in fisheries governance and management – or not a concern at all – while the focus is on harvesting. This paper examines how the use of forage fish for human consumption can be increased within the limits of sustainability, using Baltic herring as a case study. Baltic herring contains high levels of dioxins and the human consumption is very low: the catches are mostly used for industrial purposes. The paper uses a participatory backcasting exercise to define a desirable future vision for the use of Baltic herring catch and to develop pathways of actor-specific governance actions to increase the use of the fish as a safe-to-eat food. The results reveal that increasing the contribution of forage fish, such as Baltic herring, to food security entails a paradigm shift in fisheries governance that involves 1) inclusion of well-defined objectives for catch use in the EU CFP and the related regional multiannual plans, 2) broadening the scope of the MSY-driven governance and management to one that addresses catch use, and 3) proactive catch use governance.