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Background The pelagic fisheries in the North East Atlantic have become a commercially driven and developing sector of the food industry for participating nations. Commercial advantage has been achieved through investment in modern fishing vessels and processing factories in response to growing international demand for pelagic fish and fishery products. With competition for a highly valuable natural resource, very careful and often complex regulation and control is required between Parties to ensure pelagic resources remain sustainable with controlled exploitation and development. It has long been recognised that this scenario is common throughout fisheries worldwide. If fish stocks are to be maintained with enough fish for future generations then everyone involved in fishing must help conserve and manage these resources. It was with this in mind that the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) developed and subsequently adopted the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries in 1995. The Code sets out principles and standards of behaviour for responsible practices with a view to ensuring the effective conservation, management and development of living aquatic resources, with due respect for the ecosystem and biodiversity. The Code recognizes the nutritional, economic, social, environmental and cultural importance of fisheries, and the interests of all those concerned with the fishery sector. The Code takes into account the biological characteristics of the resources and their environment and the interests of consumers and other users. Within Europe the management of fisheries has been developed by Member States and the FAO Code is applied through the regulation of the CFP (2371/2002) which was adopted into the law of the EU from 1st January 2003 after undergoing major reform. The scope of the policy states under Article 1; "The Common Fisheries Policy shall cover conservation, management and exploitation of living aquatic resources, aquaculture, and the processing and marketing of fishery and aquaculture products....." Furthermore the common objective of the policy states ‘The Common Fisheries Policy shall ensure exploitation of living aquatic resources that provides sustainable economic, environmental and social conditions' (Article 2). |