A revolutionary scheme to grow organic cod in Scottish fish farms, touted as the ethical answer to a global crisis in fish stocks, has been shut down after it lost £40m in three years.
The world's first attempt to farm organic cod, "No Catch" fish was sold as a breakthrough in sustainable fisheries. Its costly marketing campaign boasted it would "save the planet" and claimed celebrities such as Demi Moore had savoured its ethically-conscious produce.
"Not too high a price to pay for a clear conscience," its adverts said.
But the administrators Grant Thornton, brought in earlier this year to rescue the Shetland-based business from total collapse, admitted that organic cod farming had been a financial disaster and had no realistic chance of succeeding.
It has sold the firm's fish- farming business to two Norwegian-owned companies, who will instead begin producing organic salmon in Shetland's coastal waters. Its last supplies of cod – totalling about 3,400 tonnes - would now be sold off at knock-down prices, less than a tenth of its original cost in the shops.
The announcement confirmed mounting suspicions on Shetland – where accusations of bloated expense accounts and luxurious lifestyles at No Catch have been rife - that the much-hyped cod farming experiment was dead. Dozens of jobs have already been lost.
At Scalloway fish market last week, No Catch cod was being sold whole as ordinary fish for less than the wild-caught Atlantic cod it was expected to replace.
