The latest edition of the European Commission’s periodic Eurobarometer report presents worrying news: consumption of fish and shellfish, particularly of the fresh variety, is declining in Europe, as consumers look for less costly alternatives for at-home and restaurant meals. The percentage of households that eat fishery and aquaculture products at home at least once a week has fallen by 4% since the previous Eurobarometer, to 29%, the new report shows. This is a bloc-wide average, and some stalwarts such as Spain continue to buck the trend. But even there, fresh fish sales are falling relative to frozen, cured, or canned alternatives. More than half of Europe’s seafood consumers say price is the main reason for this negative trend. Much industry attention is paid to product appearance, when their pocketbooks is what matters to most buyers. Canned, cured, and frozen products have familiar appearances—their convenience is decades or centuries old—but more important, their prices are lower.
The report continues to show well-known patterns of consumer behavior. Households that are closer to coastlines eat more fish (79% of homes within 5km of water bodies eat seafood at least once a month, compared to 49% of those that are at least 200km from the sea), and consumers near the seas, lakes, and rivers prefer wild-caught to farmed fish and shellfish. The seafood leader, Spain, is still king, according to the Eurobarometer report. Spanish households eat seafood at home more than twice as often (64%) as the EU average and buy fish on a weekly basis at double (54%) the EU average. Spaniards also go out to eat seafood far more often than the bloc’s average of twice per week.