Food & Farming · Sunday, 13 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

The mackerel in British tins is now a Chilean fish from a different family. The rule was changed so the tin can still say mackerel.

Food & Farming 13 sources

Atlantic mackerel stocks fell by three-quarters after seven governments could not agree how to share them, so Princes and Lidl put cheaper Chilean jack mackerel in the tin, and the UK changed its labelling rule to allow the name.

1/3

of the wholesale price of Atlantic mackerel, is what Chilean jack mackerel costs

industry figures reposted by the seafood trade platform Undercurrent [1]

39%

above scientific advice, the average north-east Atlantic mackerel catch over 15 years

the Marine Stewardship Council's figure, set against the catch limits scientists recommended each year [1]

3/4

of the Atlantic mackerel stock, gone in about a decade

ICES, the council that advises governments on fish stocks, wants the 2026 catch cut by about 70% [1]

1/2

the omega-3 in jack mackerel compared with the fish it replaces

it also carries about a third as much vitamin B12, which is why Which? calls it a downgrade [1]

The lead story — what happened

Princes, the company that supplies tinned fish to Britain's biggest supermarkets, has switched all of its mackerel products to jack mackerel, a different species caught off Chile. [1]
Lidl, the discount supermarket chain, now sells jack mackerel under its own brand too. [1]
Jack mackerel is not a mackerel. It belongs to the Carangidae family of fish; Atlantic mackerel belongs to the Scombridae family. [1]
Wholesale, Chilean jack mackerel costs roughly one-third as much as Atlantic mackerel, according to industry figures reposted by the seafood trade platform Undercurrent. [1]
Until December 2025, UK law let fish from that family be sold only as jack, scad, trevally or horse mackerel. Soon after Princes launched its product, Defra, the UK's environment and food department, changed the rule to permit the name jack mackerel. [1]
Which?, the UK consumer group, calls the switch skimpflation: quietly changing what is inside a product to cut costs. It says shoppers can end up paying the same price for much less nutrition. [1]
Jack mackerel has about half as much omega-3 fat and around a third as much vitamin B12 as traditional mackerel. Some shoppers have complained about the taste, the texture and how clearly the change is labelled. [1]
The reason is the fish running out. Mackerel catches in the north-east Atlantic have exceeded the level scientists advised by an average of 39% over the past 15 years, according to the Marine Stewardship Council. [1]
The stock has fallen by roughly three-quarters in a decade, according to ICES, the intergovernmental council that advises governments on fish stocks. ICES has advised cutting the 2026 catch by about 70%. [1]
Behind the overfishing is the so-called mackerel war: the UK, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, the EU and Russia have failed for years to agree a system for sharing the stock and setting limits in line with the science. [1]
Atlantic mackerel has lost its Marine Stewardship Council certificate, so it no longer meets many retailers' sourcing policies. Chilean jack mackerel holds that certificate, so the swap also satisfies those policies. [1]
Waitrose stopped selling fresh mackerel in February over overfishing. Supermarkets in the Netherlands no longer sell Atlantic mackerel, and at least one Swedish chain has switched to jack mackerel. [1]

Who is involved

Princes

a British tinned-food company that supplies the big supermarkets; it switched all its mackerel to jack mackerel from Chile
Which?

the UK's consumer group; it called the switch skimpflation and said the labelling should be upfront
Defra

the UK government department for environment, food and farming; it changed the naming rule in December 2025
ICES

the intergovernmental council that advises governments on how much fish can be caught; it wants the 2026 mackerel catch cut by about 70%
The Marine Stewardship Council

the body that certifies a fishery as sustainable; it withdrew its certificate from Atlantic mackerel and gives one to Chilean jack mackerel

How it unfolded

15 years north-east Atlantic mackerel catches run 39% above scientific advice on average
Oct 2025 Princes announces it is switching all its mackerel products to Chilean jack mackerel
Dec 2025 Defra changes the rule so the fish can be labelled jack mackerel
Feb 2026 Waitrose suspends sales of fresh mackerel over overfishing
This week Which? warns of skimpflation as Lidl also puts jack mackerel on its shelves

Where this points

The next test is the 2026 quota round: whether the seven parties in the mackerel dispute come anywhere near the 70% cut ICES advised, and whether Princes and Lidl change their labels after the Which? complaint.

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Fish running out High↑

Atlantic mackerel stocks have fallen by about three-quarters in a decade, and the advice for 2026 is a 70% cut in the catch. [1] Commercial lobster landings around Jersey, a British island off France, have fallen steadily since 2015. [7] Fin whales, the main target of Iceland's one remaining whaling company, are classed as vulnerable. [6]

Heat on the growing crops High→

Temperatures ran 10 to 15F above normal from the central Plains into the central Corn Belt in the first week of September, and only 56% of the US corn crop is rated good or excellent, 12 points below last year. [5] Spain reached 43.1C, and satellite readings show very poor crop health from southern France to western Romania. [5] India's corn crop was cut for below-normal rain, and a long dry spell caused widespread crop failure in Kenya's grain basket. [4]

Shoppers choosing by country Building↑

The US share of Canada's vegetable imports fell to 62.6% in July from 69% three years earlier, and Toronto grocers now stock oranges from South Africa. [2] The US will ban some Canadian dairy from 29 September. [13] Russia's and Ukraine's wheat exports were cut this month because the war is slowing shipments through the Black Sea. [4]

What a name may say Building↑

Britain's environment department changed its rule so a Chilean fish from a different family can be sold as jack mackerel. [1] The EU is looking at adding burger, sausage, nugget and meatball to the list of names a meat-free product may not use. [8]

The rest of the day

10 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Canadian shelves fill from Morocco and Spain

Canadian grocers are replacing American fruit and vegetables with produce from Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Brazil and Honduras, Reuters reported on Friday. [2] The US is still Canada's biggest supplier, but the US share of Canada's vegetable imports fell to 62.6% in July from 69% in July 2023. [2] Trade talks collapsed on 21 August, Canada's counter-tariffs took effect on Tuesday, and the US will ban some Canadian dairy, alcohol and vehicles from 29 September. [2][3][13] Canada's government is spending about C$3 billion over ten years on greenhouses to grow more food through its winters. [2]

Why it matters — For American growers, Canada is the second-biggest export market after Mexico, so every point of that share is a lost sale. [3] One Ontario grocer says nobody will run back to US suppliers once the new ones are set up. An economist at the University of Guelph says shoppers may drift back if relations improve, because US produce is usually cheaper. [2]
03
World wheat supply rises, Black Sea exports fall

The US Department of Agriculture raised its estimate of the world's 2026/27 wheat supply by 3.5 million tons to 1,103 million on Friday. [4] Australia's crop was raised 3 million tons to 31 million on good rain in South Australia and Victoria. [4] Ukraine's was raised to 26 million as its harvest nears completion at a record yield. [4] Exports from Russia and Ukraine were cut because August shipments were weak, with the war slowing logistics around the Black Sea. [4] The same report raised the expected US soybean price by 60 cents to $12 a bushel. [4]

Why it matters — More wheat in the world's stores, now expected at 276.3 million tons, tends to hold bread and flour prices down, and it is happening while the two biggest Black Sea exporters ship less than usual. [4]
04
Florida's sugar cane cut 9.8% since July

The US Department of Agriculture lowered its forecast for Florida's cane sugar to 1.819 million short tons on Friday, after two processors cut their own forecasts. [4] Since July the Florida forecast has fallen 9.8%, which the department says is likely the effect of a mealy bug infestation. [4] A mealy bug is a small sap-sucking insect that weakens the cane plant. Louisiana's forecast was also trimmed, to 2.252 million tons, and the department says the industry there cannot forecast the bug's effect until the harvest is well under way. [4]

Why it matters — US sugar imports from Mexico are set by an agreement that adjusts to what the US needs, so a smaller crop tends to be filled from there rather than left as a shortage. [4] How big the hole is will not be known until the cane is cut. [4]
05
Record September heat on the US Plains

Temperatures ran 10 to 15F above normal from the central Plains into the central Corn Belt in the week to 5 September, with 100F readings as far north as the lower Ohio Valley. [5] The US Department of Agriculture reports stress on rangeland, pastures, livestock and unripe summer crops. [5] Only 56% of the US corn crop was rated good or excellent on 6 September, 12 points below a year earlier, and cotton was rated 34%, 20 points below. [5] In the Northwest, cool showers helped contain wildfires and wet the topsoil ahead of winter wheat planting. [5]

Why it matters — The corn harvest is only 5% done, so the heat is landing on a crop that is still finishing, and on cattle grazing pasture the department says is under stress. [5]
06
Iceland to put a whaling ban to parliament

Iceland's government will submit a bill in February for a permanent ban on whaling, it said on Wednesday. [6] Iceland's government holds a majority in parliament. [6] Only Iceland, Norway and Japan still hunt whales commercially, despite an international moratorium that took effect in 1986. [6] In this year's season, 80 fin whales had been caught by 9 September against a quota of 150, according to the animal welfare group Humane World for Animals. [6] Fin whales are classed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. [6]

Why it matters — If the bill passes, Norway and Japan become the only two countries still whaling for sale, and Iceland's one remaining whaling company, licensed for five years in 2024, loses its trade. [6]
07
Jersey widens a lobster refuge

Jersey, a British island off the French coast, may expand a protected fishing zone around Les Ecrehous, about 10km to its north-east, where parlour pots are banned. [7] A parlour pot has two or more chambers and catches far more than a traditional single-chamber inkwell pot. [7] Commercial lobster landings around Jersey have fallen steadily since 2015. [7] A similar ban at Les Minquiers, 15km to the south, has been in place since 1997, and a report says it has helped the lobster stock. [7] The proposal has backing from fishing interests in both Jersey and France. [7]

Why it matters — It is the same problem as the mackerel in the lead story, at village scale: a stock that keeps falling, and a rule that limits the most efficient gear rather than the number of boats. [7]
08
EU may add burger and sausage to its meat-name ban

New proposals to amend the EU's Common Market Organisation, the set of rules that governs how farm products are sold, would add burger, hamburger, nugget and sausage to the list of names a meat-free product may not use, FoodNavigator reports. [8] The first version of the ban restricted 31 meat words such as steak, bacon and chicken to meat products, but left burger, sausage and nugget exempt. [8] The new proposals also add words that were not on the list before, including rabbit and meatball. [8] They are proposals, not yet law. [8]

Why it matters — Plant-based brands built their shelf space on names shoppers already knew, and the ban decides whether a pea-protein patty can still be called a burger in 27 countries. [8]
09
Ozone bubbles strip aflatoxin from peanut meal

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Wuhan built a device that pumps ozone through micro-nano bubbles to break down aflatoxin in peanut by-product, and published the results in a Nature journal on Wednesday. [9] Aflatoxin is a poison made by a mould that grows on nuts and grain, and the authors say efficient ways to remove it are still lacking. [9] Under the best settings the device removed 88% of aflatoxin B1 and 78% to 89% of three related toxins in two hours, and kept working over 12 reuse cycles. [9]

Why it matters — The authors pitch the method to the animal-feed industry, so the first place it would change anything is what goes into feed rather than what people eat. [9]
10
A crop-sensor firm says imaging cannot catch disease in time

Two scientists at InnerPlant, a California company that engineers plants to signal stress, argue in AgFunderNews that cameras and drones spot crop disease too late to help. [10] They say fungal diseases cost American soybean farmers $14.6 billion a year, about $33 an acre, and frogeye leaf spot alone typically takes 35% of yield. [10] A well-timed fungicide spray can cut that disease by up to 50%, but a survey found 65% of Missouri's soybean acres were sprayed and only 10% had been checked first. [10] The piece is an opinion column by a company selling an alternative. [10]

Why it matters — Spray-and-pray costs farmers money and puts fungicide on fields with no disease, and the numbers here come from a firm whose product depends on that being true. [10]
11
Tea grows in the open in Sussex

Mark Wyatt is growing tea, the plant camellia sinensis, on a hillside on his 100 acres in Sussex in south-east England, in a pocket between a reservoir and a wood that traps moisture. [11] Britain has imported tea since the 17th century, first from China and later India, and drinks billions of cups a year, but almost nobody has tried to grow it outdoors. [11] Wyatt says a warming climate turned the headwinds into tailwinds. [11]

Why it matters — Tea was shipped into Britain for four centuries because it could not be grown there, and a warming climate is changing that on one Sussex hillside. [11]

02 Lesson why it matters

When a food runs low, the tin keeps its name and changes its fish

When a food runs short, the seller usually changes what is inside the packet rather than the price, so what ran short reaches the shopper as a different taste.

The twist

A shortage rarely shows up as nothing on the shelf. It shows up as something else in the same tin, at the same price, under the same name.

How it works

A supply gets scarce or dear: Atlantic mackerel down three-quarters, US produce boycotted in Canada
The seller has three moves: raise the price, shrink the pack, or change what is inside
Changing what is inside is the least visible move, so it is the one most often made
Whether the swap shows depends on what the label is allowed to say, and that is a rule someone writes
The shopper meets the shortage at the table, as a different taste, instead of at the till

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

Canadian shelves filling from Morocco and Spain

the same step: US produce is boycotted, and the shelf stays full because South African oranges take the space, so the change shows on the country sign, not as a gap
The EU's meat-name ban

the same rule at the fourth step: the fight is over whether a swap may keep the old name, and whoever writes that list decides whether a shopper notices

Where you've seen this

Fish and chip shops

when cod gets dear the fryer switches to pollock, and the menu board rarely changes

Chocolate bars

when cocoa prices spike, makers swap in palm fat or shrink the bar rather than charge shoppers more

Car factories in a chip shortage

in 2021 cars shipped without heated seats or one screen, at the same sticker price, instead of not shipping

The catch

The swap only stays quiet while the new thing is close enough to pass. Jack mackerel has half the omega-3, and the complaints about taste have already started.

And the whole of it

The Norwegian skipper, the quota negotiator, the buyer at Princes and the shopper in a British supermarket each made a sensible choice from where they sat, and none of them can see the chain from the boat to the tin. Most of us are the shopper in it. We can read the price and the picture on the label, and almost nothing of what happened at sea to put a different fish inside.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

The UK, Norway, Iceland, Russia, the EU, Greenland and the Faroe Islands could not agree how to share the Atlantic mackerel, so their boats caught 39% more than scientists advised, on average, for fifteen years, and the stock fell by three-quarters. Princes and Lidl then put a cheaper Chilean fish in the tin, and Britain's environment department changed its labelling rule so the tin could still say mackerel. [1]

Why it works on us — The word mackerel on the tin does the work: a shopper reads the name, not the family of fish, and a name that has not changed says nothing has changed.

Who gains

Chile's jack mackerel fishery — Its fish carries the Marine Stewardship Council certificate that Atlantic mackerel lost, so it meets the sourcing policies many retailers set; supermarkets in the Netherlands have stopped selling Atlantic mackerel and at least one Swedish chain has switched to jack mackerel. [1]
Princes — Its raw fish costs about a third as much wholesale, and Which? says shoppers can end up paying the same price for the tin. [1]
Growers in South Africa, Morocco, Spain, Brazil and Honduras — Their produce is taking the shelf space that American fruit and vegetables held in Canadian shops. [2]
Australian wheat and barley farmers — Good rain lifted the wheat forecast by 3 million tons and barley to a record 17.1 million, with more of both expected to be exported. [4]
South American beef exporters — The US raised its beef import forecast on expanded quotas that cut tariffs on their beef through November. [4]
Canadian greenhouse builders — The Canadian government is spending about C$3 billion over ten years on greenhouses to grow more food in winter. [2]

Who pays

Shoppers who buy tinned mackerel — The fish in the tin now has about half the omega-3 and a third of the vitamin B12, and the tin costs them the same as before. [1]
Fishermen who catch Atlantic mackerel — The stock is down three-quarters and the scientific advice is a 70% cut in next year's catch. [1]
American fruit and vegetable growers — Their share of Canada's vegetable imports fell to 62.6% from 69%, in a market second only to Mexico for US farm exports. [2][3]
Canadian independent grocers — One Toronto chain cut its advertising budget because switching suppliers pushed up its operating costs. [2]
Cane growers in Florida and Louisiana — A mealy bug infestation has already taken 9.8% off Florida's forecast since July, and the Louisiana loss cannot yet be counted. [4]
Ranchers on the southern Plains — Record heat in the first week of September put rangeland, pastures and livestock under stress. [5]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether the tins say plainly that this is a different fish.

Princes says its jack mackerel products are clearly identified. Which? says shoppers may not realise a product has changed until they get it home and eat it. Nobody in the pool has compared the labels. [1]
02

Whether the 70% catch cut will ever be applied.

ICES only advises. The seven governments in the mackerel dispute have failed for years to agree limits in line with that advice, and nothing in the reporting says this year is different. [1]
03

Whether Canadian shoppers stay away from US produce if a trade deal comes.

One Ontario grocer says nobody is running back to US suppliers. An economist at the University of Guelph says they may, because US produce is usually cheaper. Both are guessing about a deal that does not exist. [2]
04

How much of Florida's and Louisiana's cane the mealy bug will take.

Florida's forecast has fallen 9.8% since July, but the US Department of Agriculture says the industry cannot forecast the bug's effect until the harvest is well under way. [4]
05

How many bushels of corn the September heat took.

The crop's condition rating is 12 points below last year, but only 5% has been harvested, so the yield is still a forecast. [5]
06

Whether burger and sausage really join the EU's banned list.

They are in new proposals to amend the rules, and the last round exempted exactly those words. [8]
07

Whether Iceland's whaling ban becomes law.

The bill goes to parliament in February. Iceland's government has a majority, but an interim government issued a five-year whaling licence in 2024. [6]
08

Whether the ozone method works outside the laboratory.

It was tested on peanut by-product in a customised device over 12 cycles, and the authors pitch it for feed mills that have not tried it. [9]

04 Hope carry this

Iceland's government will put a permanent ban on whaling to its parliament in February, and it holds a majority there.

Also true today

Fishermen from Jersey and from France both backed widening the zone where the most efficient lobster pots are banned, and the older zone to the south has helped the lobster stock since 1997.
Ukraine's wheat harvest is nearing completion at a record yield, 26 million tons, and Australia's crop was raised 3 million tons on good rain.
A team in Wuhan removed 78% to 89% of four aflatoxins from peanut meal with ozone bubbles, and the device kept working through 12 rounds.