The Common Language Group

The Common Language Group (CLG) provides a safe meeting space to discuss the key issues facing a responsible seafood supply chain. The topics covered include fisheries management, legal fishing, fishing methods and how to trace and track seafood along the supply chain. It also covers how seafood is bought and eaten in and out of the home. It is an opportunity to share new ideas or case studies from around the world.

The group is led by our industry and we take responsibility for running the CLG. The Group has met three times a year since 2007. The CLG brings together people who represent the retail, processing, food service and restaurant industry. Other people who attend are not-for-profit voluntary groups, consumer groups, governments, scientists and producer organisations.

CLG meetings and bite-size meetings

There are generally three meetings a year. The presentations and minutes from the most recent meetings are below. Presentations and minutes from previous meetings are available from Karen Green.

Due to Covid we are running shorter online bite-size CLG meetings at the moment.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be an in person meeting in London on 13 September 2022 from 10.30am to 3.30pm. For further information, please contact: Karen Green

Previous two bite-size meetings

Global and UK IUU landscape (7 June 2022). This meeting provided a review of Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing and its impacts at global, regional and national (UK) levels, and looked at the development of UK national IUU measures and what the UK is doing to tackle fisheries crime and IUU fishing. See the presentations:

Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing impacts: A systematic review of evidence and proposed future agenda. Andrew Temple, MRAG.
Current UK IUU policy. Jake Kingsley, Senior Policy Advisor IUU, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)/Jacob Flaherty, Marine Management Organisation. TO COME
Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS) approach to addressing IUU fishing and forced labour. Robert Blasiak, SeaBOS Task Force.

Changing dynamics of seafood supply chains (12 April 2022). The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had significant implications for the UK seafood supply chain. This meeting looked at the potential implication of global food-related trade sanctions against Russia on the UK seafood supply chain. This provided an overview of global whitefish supply, Russia’s contribution to that supply, the UKs reliance on Russian raw material, and the direct implications to business from possible trade sanctions and inevitable business disruption. See the presentations:

Impact of Ukrainian - Russian conflict on the UK seafood sector. Arina Motova, Seafish.
Changing dynamics of seafood supply chains. Andrew Kuyk, Seafood Industry Alliance.

CLG bite-size meeting notes

Notes and minutes from recent CLG bite-size meetings can be viewed by following the links below.

CLG monthly newsletters

We send monthly emails with a round up of stories, research and projects in the seafood industry. Subscribe to receive our monthly update and meeting details.

You can view previous email updates by following the links below.

Terms of Reference and archive

We have archived presentations from previous CLG bite-size meetings. These are available from Karen Green.

Presentations from our face-to-face CLG meetings are available from Karen Green

View The Common Language Group Terms of Reference (March 2019)

Contacts

For further information, please contact: Karen Green