Food, in brief

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]

Why it matters. 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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]