British restaurants using black market caviar

An illegal black market exists in Britain in cut-price caviar smuggled from the Caspian Sea, where the sturgeon is losing a battle for survival against over-fishing.

In scenes redolent of the illicit trade in stolen gadgets in pubs, traders knocking at the backdoor of restaurants are offering caviar at big discounts. The smuggling has so far passed with little sanction. EU countries imported 591 tonnes of caviar in 2006, but seizures of illegal caviar between 2000 and 2005 totalled just 12 tonnes.

Paul Merritt, a Michelin-starred chef and BBC television food presenter, confirmed the existence of the practice - which is little mentioned by the restaurant trade. He told The Independent he was often offered caviar at half the normal price by suspicious characters. "Three or four people would ring up and say, 'I've got some caviar. Would you like some now?' - just like you would if you had someone calling up and saying, 'I've got a few dodgy stereos'," he said. "I had no idea how they would be getting the eggs, and it's not the same quality as legal caviar."

Steve Carter, the head chef at the London restaurant Boodle's, a private member's club in St James's, disclosed that he had been offered cut-price caviar "a thousand times", but had never taken up the offers.

Experts estimate that sources of caviar in the Caspian have fallen by more than 90 per cent since the late 1970s because of overfishing - legal and illegal. To counter the trade, the Government introduced new rules this month that require all caviar sold in the UK to be marked with non-reusable labels approved by Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species).

Any company that switches caviar from the original container must register with the Department for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Anybody trading in illegal caviar within the UK is liable to a two-year prison sentence and a fine of up to £5,000.

Despite the sanctions, the illegal trade in caviar is thriving here and abroad. Cites banned almost all fishing for caviar last year because sturgeon levels had fallen so fast in the Caspian, which supplies about 90 per cent of the world's stocks.

Environmentalists attacked its decision to overturn the ban this February. Cites granted the countries around the Caspian - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia and Turkmenistan - permission to export 3.7 tonnes of beluga caviar this year. In January, it gave the same countries the go-ahead to sell 96 tonnes of other varieties of caviar - 15 per cent below the level set in 2005.

But Mr Merritt said: "The thing about caviar is that it turns up on the top of something else... and the more I read about the caviar situation the more guilty I felt and decided we should stop using it."

Interesting? Click here to explore further