Your article covers the negative effect of fishmeal exports on local livelihoods in Senegal, where factories are increasingly buying up fish for export to Turkey, and have thus negatively affected the local fishing industry (The hidden cost of your supermarket sea bass, 22 May). This may all be true, and it is sad to see the loss of jobs in the Senegalese artisanal fishing industry.
Yet it is a very one-sided picture. Rising fish prices in Senegal are part of a global trend, driven in part by rising consumption in rich countries as people shift their diets from beef to other sources of protein. Poorer countries, such as Senegal, that traditionally rely upon fish have also seen changes in diet, with fish being increasingly replaced by poultry and barbecued meat. Similarly, the recent increase in food insecurity in Senegal has less to do with an increase in fishmeal export and more to do with the Russia-Ukraine war, which has caused a huge disruption of Russian and Ukrainian exports of oil, wheat and fertilisers.
