Author: Mildred Bell
Mildred Bell
Mildred Bell is a full-time digital professional, seasoned traveler, and ardent outdoor enthusiast who infuses her writing with a sincere love of the natural world. In her role as Senior Editor at fishonline.co.uk, the online home of Seafood Audit International, Mildred is in charge of editorial content covering news about the seafood industry, updates on food safety, politics, finance, and commentary from prominent figures in the fishing and seafood industries. Beyond the desk, Mildred has a deeper connection to the material she edits. She is a passionate angler who has spent years fishing open waters, rivers, and coastlines throughout the UK and beyond. Her genuine knowledge of the fishing industry informs all of her editorial choices. Mildred's passion for travel stems from the same restless curiosity. She has traveled to many different continents with a rod, a notebook, and an eye for the stories that others overlook.
There is a certain type of website that practically no one outside of a certain industry is familiar with, but everyone in that industry appears to have bookmarked it. Among them is Fish Information & Services’ seafood directory, FIS Suppliers. Long before the word “platform” was used at conferences, it had been discreetly cataloguing the world’s fish trade since 1995. You’ll probably find someone with the FIS page open in a tab in any mid-sized exporter’s office in Karachi or Casablanca, half-forgotten, half-essential. What surprises you is the size of the object. More than 135,000 businesses, arranged by processing type,…
A seafood processing facility after dark has a subtle, unsettling quality. When most consumers pull a vacuum-sealed fillet from a supermarket shelf, they are unaware of the working world that exists there: the hum of refrigeration units, the slap of rubber boots on wet concrete, and the smell of brine and bleach mixing under fluorescent lights. However, this is where the true narrative of contemporary seafood auditing is being written. In the third shift, when the cameras of courteous daytime visits have long since been turned off, rather than in flashy boardroom presentations. Richard Chivers’ consultancy, Seafood Audit International, is…
On a wet Tuesday morning, you’ll probably find two fish lying side by side on crushed ice if you visit any fishmonger along the Scottish coast. One is a glossy, striped mackerel that is almost too attractive for its true nature. The other is gurnard, which turned off customers for decades before chefs rediscovered it because of its peculiar armored head and bug eyes. In a conversation that most British home cooks haven’t really started yet, both fish have subtly taken center stage. Food Standards Scotland’s most recent review, which was released in early November, is the kind of document…
On a Saturday morning, you can witness the same little ritual taking place at any respectable fish counter. Someone asks the man behind the glass when the salmon entered after leaning in, sniffing once, and frowning. “Thursday, maybe Wednesday,” he says with a shrug. The client is hesitant. purchases it nonetheless. In a strange way, this conveys the whole story of seafood safety in a single, brief scene: a mixture of quiet uncertainty, intuition, and trust that most of us are never able to fully resolve. The healthiest option is supposedly seafood. Omega-3 fatty acids and lean protein are the…