Rescoloco, a project to raise awareness among elected officials, cooks and children about the consumption of local fish

Des ateliers seront proposés aux cuisiniers pour leur donner des idées de recettes. Midi Libre – Vincent ANDORRA

Led by the Syndicat mixte du bassin de Thau, the project aims to provide keys to municipalities wishing to offer more local fish in their canteens.

Less breaded cod, more local fish on schoolchildren's plates. This is, in essence, the objective pursued by ''Rescoloco'', a project validated last July after several months of work and led by the Syndicat mixte du bassin de Thau. It aims to raise awareness and mobilize stakeholders in municipal school catering to integrate more local seafood.“We want to support the municipalities in this work of relocating their supply within the framework of the Egalim law”, indicates Fabien Héran, facilitator of the Sète-Agde-Méditerranée Territorial Food Plan (PAT).

Eight municipalities made aware

The project has made a bet to support all stakeholders: elected officials, managers in charge of public markets, cooks as well as children and service staff. Over two school years (2024-2025 and 2025-2026), eight municipalities, four from Sète Agglopôle and four from Hérault Méditerranée, will be involved in workshops. These will, among other things, provide managers with the keys to purchasing fish while respecting current regulations and, for cooks, to test other ways of cooking fish in the form of parmentier or as a starter. Activities will be offered to three groups of children per municipality with a discovery of seafaring professions or a visit to the fish market.

“We are not arriving as utopians, assures Fabien Héran. Our idea is to offer cross-functional support, to create a link to work together". "We want to give keys to communities in order to remove obstacles. We want them to reconnect with the world of the sea”, adds Béatrice Pary, facilitator of the DLAL Feamp* program. She worked upstream with producer organizations, who were also motivated by the project. Experimental, Rescoloco could however become a pilot project to then be deployed, why not, at the national level.

* Local development supported by local stakeholders (DLAL), European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). I subscribe to read the rest