Jayne Kirkham, Cornwall Councillor for Falmouth Smithick said it is time for action to save Cornwall's shellfish industry.

Recently, British fishermen were told they are indefinitely banned from selling live mussels, oysters, clams, cockles and scallops to EU member states.

Unless something can be worked out, this will be costly for the Falmouth fishermen who lost their entire export business on 1st January when we left the EU.

[H3] "It is time for Cornwall to step up and save one of our last surviving heritage industries" [.H2]

Jayne Kirkham writes:

"As we are now a 'third country' we can no longer export unprocessed oysters, scallops and mussels into the EU. We have no means to process the shellfish as yet - that would mean building new purifying plants on the banks of the Fal.

"The Government appears to have forgotten about shellfish in their Brexit deal, and there are still no details of the proposed £23 million compensation package they announced weeks ago. And for those who say we should just sell our scallops in the UK?

"The industry has set up local markets where they sell about 40kg per week. They used to export 10,000kg per week to the EU and despite French covid lockdowns last year, they were still selling at full capacity. There is no way the UK market can fill this gap.

"We, therefore, have choices to make in Cornwall. We can let the incompetence and failure to act of our national government and environment secretary George Eustice wipe out one of the last remaining Cornish heritage industries after 400 years, or we can act to help save it.

"Fal Oysters have a crowdfunder for a hatchery. We can build that up. We can use our council investment company, private investors or maybe even apply for some remaining ERDF money (which would be some irony) to put money into a purification plant."

Click here to find out more about the crowdfunder.

Jayne Kirkham added:

"If the government won't step in to right a massive wrong and fix the broken promises it made to our Cornish fishing industry, then another way needs to be found."

Click here to see more from Jayne Kirkham.

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