Plans afoot in Britain to reintroduce oysters

It's 10:30 am, and the staff at Haward's Oyster Bar in London's Borough Market are rushing to get everything ready for the inevitable lunchtime rush. But it's not too early for one man, who orders four medium gigas oysters for breakfast. "I know it's early, but there's too many people here at lunchtime," he says.

The Haward family has been harvesting oysters for centuries from the creeks around Mersea Island in Essex, east of London. On a typical Friday, they sell 1,600 oysters at their London stall, and on a Saturday about 3,000.

At this time of year, the only available oysters are the Pacific gigas oysters, which originated in Japan but are farmed all over the world.

The oysters, once shucked, are firm and fresh and enlivened by lemon juice, chili sauce or with shallots and red wine vinegar. In Europe, unlike in China, they are normally eaten raw.

Aug 5 was National Oyster Day, a festival to continue the revival of a dish that has become, in the UK, the preserve of a small percentage of the population, unlike in France, where they are universally popular.

The British Isles have almost as much coastline as China, yet it produces a fraction of the number of oysters. In the 21st century, Britons are as ambivalent about seafood in general - with the exception of deep-fried fish and chips - as they are about oysters. It is one of the ironies of the Brexit debate that the British fishing industry's desire to take control of its fishing grounds is far greater than the appetite of British people to buy its catch. Most of the seafood caught or harvested around the UK is sold to the European Union.

But back to oysters. China produces approximately 80 percent of the world's output. South Korea, Japan, the United States and France make up the rest of the top five. Ireland is the 12th-biggest producer, while the UK is the 17th. Ireland exports most of its produce, with China a growing market.

Oysters have been farmed in Britain since it was run by the Roman Empire, and production seems to have peaked in the early part of the 20th century, but there are plans afoot to reintroduce oysters to several sites around Britain.

For decades, oyster production has declined because of disease, overfishing, pollution and invasive species. Oysters have never quite disappeared, and there are regular oyster fairs in places such as Whitstable in Kent. In Galway City on the west coast of Ireland, most pubs offer fresh oysters alongside beer, but that has yet to catch on anywhere else.

The Blue Marine Foundation plans to introduce 5 million oysters to the Solent Estuary in the south of England. The estuary was the largest oyster fishery in Europe, but they have been disappearing over the past 50 years, and harvesting was halted in 2013.

These plans can be too successful. Earlier this year, the Danish embassy in China invited Chinese people to help it clear hundreds of tons of Pacific oysters, which were blocking waterways and suppressing native oysters.

If the UK continues to increase its production of oysters, it must develop more of a taste for them or ensure they can be easily exported to the EU. Otherwise, the British embassy in Beijing will have to follow its Danish counterpart in making appeals to Chinese gourmands on micro blogs to ease its oyster glut.

The author is a senior editor at China Daily UK. Contact the writer at Conal@mail.chinadailyuk.com.

(China Daily European Weekly 08/11/2017 page11)