A splash of white wine, a handful of basil leaves and a few minutes preparation are all it takes to transform mussels that 24 hours ago were filtering seawater off the south Devon coast, into a delicious starter.
At the training kitchen in London’s oldest fish market, Billingsgate, in Poplar, we learn that fresh mussels require two vital preparation steps that the vacuum-packed, cooked variety don’t: “debearding” or pulling off the “byssus” thread that attaches the shell to rocks and other substrate, and the discarding of any with broken or open shells
“Just tap them and if they shut again, they are fine to eat,” says Nicki Holmyard, seafood writer and co-founder of Offshore Shellfish, a rope-cultured mussel farm off Lyme Bay, south Devon.
In all, the preparation takes two or three minutes, the steam cooking, three or four and the wolfing down, straight from the pan, of the plump little bivalves maybe three.
“These are so delicious,” says Tom Brown, chef at Pearly Queen, an oyster and fish restaurant in Shoreditch. “And all we’ve done is drop them in a little bit of wine.”
They are sweet and juicy, more succulent than the supermarket variety, and packed with omega 3 and vitamins. Farmed bivalves such as mussels and oysters have the Marine Conservation Society’s stamp of approval, rated “best choice” for consumers and recognised as a sustainable food that encourages marine biodiversity and captures carbon.
Yet, in the UK, most Britons eat, on average, just one portion of seafood a week, 80% of which is made up of just five species. Cod and haddock, the staple of fish and chip dinners, are the most common choices, followed by salmon, tuna and prawns. Now, the British shellfish industry is making a fresh bid to encourage people to eat more mussels, oysters and clams and wants the government to lift restrictions to help.
Shellfish farms suffer by association with the bad reputation of salmon farms, their advocates say. But unlike salmon farms, which require feed and medicine to treat outbreaks of parasites and disease, shellfish require little input.
“We don’t feed our mussels, they filter nutrients from the seawater,” says Holmyard. No additives or medicine are used, she says. “We’ve seen 85 different species growing off mussel lines and they provide nurseries for fish.”
Before sale, the farmed mussels are subject to a “rigorous testing process in this country. If people buy mussels from a fishmonger, they are safe to eat.”
Most UK shellfish is exported, and Holmyard’s farm, where 95% of mussels are sold in the Netherlands, is no exception. But the business, operating in what is ranked as class-A shellfish water, is at the mercy of Britain’s appalling water quality and what she and the Shellfish Association of Great Britain (SAGB) say is an unfair post-Brexit water classification system which does not align with EU practices.
Mussels and water quality are tested monthly. If water quality is bad, the area is temporarily downgraded. But under the current system, the area can also be downgraded for the same month the next year, and the month after that, and the produce cannot be sold in the EU unless it comes from class-A waters. “It’s an irrational system,” says Holmyard.
Robin Hancock, who co-founded Wright Brothers, first as a restaurant then a wholesale oyster and seafood business, two decades ago, says: “In the Victorian era, there were 4,000 oyster shuckers’ licences in London, with people buying them to eat from tables in the street. It was an important part of our culture.”
The European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis), is native to the UK but the extensive reefs have been virtually wiped out due to dredging, overfishing and pollution.
“We produced 50,000 tonnes of oysters in 1861,” says Hancock. “In 2021, it was down to 12 tonnes. It slightly breaks our hearts. What is a cottage industry should be huge in this country.”
But while oysters are growing more popular in restaurants and bars, the UK oyster farming industry is being hampered by the lack of fishmongers as well as a row over the farming of different species.
David Jarrad, chief executive of the SAGB, says: “In total, we produce 29 million oysters a year. By comparison, the French are producing 1,200 million. Yet we have similar hydrological conditions and a much larger coastline. We’re only scratching the surface of the market.”
Each year the UK produces 12 tonnes of native and 2,900 tonnes of the faster-growing and hardier Pacific oysters, introduced after the former’s decline, but now considered an invasive species. This means there are various restrictions applied to farms that grow them.
Jarrad says the species is here already and trying to stop progress “is like playing King Canute”.
Gareth Cunningham, the director of conservation at the Marine Conservation Society, says: “The sensible way to approach this would be to see it as an invasive species but apply exceptions [to its spread] in certain circumstances.
“There is a great deal that the government can be doing to encourage shellfish farmers” who produce a “real sustainable protein”, he says, including tackling poor coastal water quality.
A Defra spokesperson says: “This government will always back our UK fishing and shellfish industry. We continue to work closely with industry to ensure we have the most productive and sustainable sector possible.”
