Swiss fishermen launch label to promote local wild fish

Swiss professional fishing associations have launched the first unified quality label for local wild fish, SRF reported Sunday. The Swiss Wild Fish label is intended to help consumers distinguish fish caught in Switzerland from imported products and farmed fish.

“Swiss wild fish is a rare product, there is not so much of it anymore. We want customers to be able to choose it consciously,” Reto Leuch, president of the Swiss Professional Fishermen’s Association, told SRF.

The label guarantees that the fish comes from a Swiss lake and was caught by a licensed professional fisherman. It also confirms that legal requirements have been met.

The label was developed by the Lake Fishing Platform, founded in 2020, together with the Swiss Professional Fishermen’s Association and the French-speaking Swiss Professional Fishermen’s Association.

For now, the label will not be available in supermarkets because the administrative burden, particularly the required inspections, would be too great for fishermen. Consumers who buy directly from professional fishermen, including at weekly markets, will be able to find products carrying the label.

The initiative aims to show that wild fish is a high-quality Swiss product from the region and to persuade consumers to pay the corresponding price rather than choose imported fish. Local wild fish currently accounts for only between 1 and 3 percent of the market.

Restaurants are expected to use the label next. Leuch said fishermen could no longer supply enough fish for restaurants to rely on it exclusively, but he hoped restaurants would identify individual dishes carrying the label.

The products include perch, pike, trout, bondelle, vengeron or roach, carp, tench and catfish. The label also aims to make less familiar fish such as catfish, roach and carp more appealing to consumers. “Today, these fish are still somewhat unpopular because of their many bones. But we want these fish to end up on people’s plates too,” Leuch said.

Fishermen said the warm summer had not affected them particularly severely. Small bodies of water and the fish living in them had suffered, while fish in larger waters had moved to deeper areas. Waters are generally becoming warmer, however, changing fish populations, with fewer perch and whitefish and more carp and catfish.