Most UK add European Supermarket Tins of Mackerel Don’t Contain Real Mackerel
A cheap fish substitution is spreading across European supermarket shelves. Tinned “mackerel” increasingly no longer means North Atlantic mackerel at all, but a cheaper, unrelated species imported from the other side of the world. Who’s actually responsible depends on who you ask, but the consumer downgrade at the end of it is not in dispute.
The Mackerel switch
Waitrose was the first UK retailer to act, suspending fresh, chilled and frozen mackerel sourcing from February 2026, with tinned stock to follow as it sold through. All of its North Atlantic mackerel had come from Scottish waters. Princes and John West have both introduced Chilean jack mackerel lines sold through Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl. M&S has paused sourcing, while Sainsbury’s and Morrisons remain under review.
The same pattern has reached the Netherlands, where Jumbo, Lidl Netherlands and Albert Heijn dropped North Atlantic mackerel even earlier than Waitrose, and at least one major Swedish retailer has made a comparable switch.
The Taste Bud Response
Jack mackerel (Trachurus murphyi) is not a close relative of North Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus) despite the shared name. It belongs to an entirely different fish family, and wholesale, it costs roughly a third of the price.
UK canned-food reviewer Marcus Ansell, whose channel Tinned Fish Reviews has close to 300,000 subscribers, read the nutrition labels on camera for John West’s two products: 1.5g of omega-3 per 100g for the jack mackerel, against 2.2g for the real thing, both made in the same Portuguese factory. His verdict on the substitute leaned toward metallic, and closer to tuna than mackerel.
Which?‘s Sue Davies has called the trend a form of skimpflation, warning shoppers can end up paying the same price for a product that delivers noticeably less nutritional value.
Marcus Ansell – Tinned Fish Reviews on YoutubeA Six-State Failure, By the Numbers
Northeast Atlantic mackerel is managed jointly by six coastal states: the UK, Norway, the EU, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. They have failed to agree a comprehensive sharing deal for at least four consecutive years.
ICES advised a 70 per cent cut for 2026, down to 174,357 tonnes. On 15 December 2025, the four-party bloc of the UK, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland instead set their own combined catch at 299,010 tonnes, roughly 72 per cent above that advice, without consulting Brussels. Days later, EU fisheries ministers set a provisional EU-only limit in line with the 70 per cent cut, pending a full-year deal.
That full-year deal never materialised as a genuine six-state agreement. Instead, at the AgriFish Council on 30 March 2026, EU ministers revised their own provisional cut from 70 per cent to 48 per cent, moving the EU’s own allocation closer to the level the four-party states had already claimed, rather than holding to the stricter scientific advice. For Ireland, the largest holder of the EU’s mackerel quota, this meant a rise from around 11,700 tonnes under the 70 per cent scenario to roughly 18,800 tonnes, worth an estimated €32 million in additional landings. Minister of State Timmy Dooley called it an effort “to bring some balance and level the playing pitch,” while the Seafood Ireland Alliance welcomed the stability but noted the Irish fleet still faces the loss of more than half its 2025 quota.
The underlying dispute, in other words, was never actually settled. Ireland, backed at various points by Poland, Latvia, Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Sweden, formally raised the matter at AgriFish Councils on 26 January and again on 23 February 2026, urging the Commission to treat the four-party exclusion of the EU as a priority and to consider using the EU’s Unsustainable Fishing Regulation (No 1026/2012) as a lever against the states involved. The European Commission’s own assessment put total 2026 fishing pressure on the stock, once all parties’ catches are combined, at over 400,000 tonnes, more than double the level ICES considers sustainable.
Talks at NEAFC headquarters in London in January produced no breakthrough. An EU-chaired round in Reykjavik in March collapsed altogether, with the European Commission saying no progress had been made despite assurances of flexibility beforehand.
The next opportunity comes with ICES’s 2027 advice, due 30 September 2026, ahead of a fresh negotiating round expected this autumn.
The Industry’s Case — And Its Fault Lines
Not every voice in the fishing industry agrees on who’s to blame. In Scotland, Ian Gatt of the Scottish Pelagic Sustainability Group and Hannah Fennell of the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association argue the UK has led efforts toward a workable sharing deal and is now being penalised by retailers for other states’ refusal to compromise. Then-Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon made the same case directly to Waitrose in February 2026, defending Scottish mackerel’s sustainability credentials.
Irish and EU industry bodies see it rather differently. The Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation has accused the UK of standing alongside Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland in a four-party deal that rewards unilateral setting of inflated quotas, sidelines EU interests and disregards the European pelagic industry’s legitimate stake in a shared stock. The Irish Fish Producers’ Organisation places blame squarely on years of reckless overfishing by Norway, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and the UK, arguing all four have set inflated quotas against scientific advice while the EU itself failed to act. The European Commission‘s own position, formally lodged after the four-party deal was signed without consulting Brussels, was that the arrangement undermined the legitimate interests of the EU fishing industry and posed serious risks to the stock’s sustainability.
The dispute, in other words, isn’t simply coastal states against the EU. It cuts through the UK’s own claim to be a responsible actor pushing for resolution, since from an Irish and EU vantage point, the UK sits on the other side of the table entirely, as a co-signatory to the very quota arrangement blamed for entrenching the overfishing at the heart of this story.
The Conservation Case
WWF called on UK retailers in November 2025 to stop sourcing the stock immediately. The Marine Conservation Society backed Waitrose’s decision as necessary given years of quotas set above scientific advice. Oceana UK‘s Hugo Tagholm struck a note that, notably, aligns with the industry’s own framing: responsibility for the crisis lies with governments, not supermarkets or shoppers.
The Market Body Caught in the Middle
The North Atlantic Pelagic Advocacy Group, a coalition of around 60 seafood businesses chaired by Seafish since 2020, has said plainly that a supply chain without confidence in the stock’s future will look elsewhere. Its own fishery improvement projects are due to end this year, a deadline it has cited as forcing the issue.
Ireland: Watching, Not Yet Affected — But Not Immune
Aldi and Lidl are major Irish retailers with the same corporate exposure as their UK and Dutch counterparts already documented switching. No confirmed sourcing change has been identified on Irish shelves at time of writing, though cached ingredient data for Irish own-brand lines may not reflect current stock.
Killybegs processor John Shine of Shines Seafood describes 2025 as a brutal year, with the price of North Atlantic mackerel rising sharply and no way to pass the full increase on to customers. He was told, he says, that switching to the new Chilean import was already a done deal among the bigger players, and that holding out on the traditional fish would be commercial suicide.
John and Marianne Shine and their daughter Ciara, Shine Seafoods, Killybegs, Co. Donegal.Shine’s business looked at redesigning its packaging for the new species and ingredients list. That is as far as it went.
“Everyone was talking about the price gap,” he says. “Nobody was talking about the difference in quality, taste and flavour.” Shines chose to stay with North Atlantic mackerel, on the reasoning that a family brand answers to its customers first. His verdict: good mackerel isn’t cheap, and cheap mackerel isn’t good.
Ireland’s own campaign for a coastal-states resolution has been covered previously in The Skipper. What’s changing on European shelves is a separate, more recent consequence of the same unresolved dispute.
Where This Leaves the Consumer
Until six governments agree a deal none of them has managed in over four years, the pattern looks set to spread rather than resolve. Retailers will keep hitting their own purchasing-window decisions one at a time, and shoppers will keep finding a cheaper, less nutritious fish in a tin that still says mackerel on the front.
Related Skipper coverage:
We cannot let EU off the hook – “No Icelandic Deal without Reciprocity.”
Mackerel from Irish Waters Should Be For Human Consumption Not Animal Feed in Other Countries
“Stop EU from Selling Our Fishing Resources to Iceland” – IFPO & IFPEA
