What kind of oyster-eater are you?

The latest fight between the EU and the UK isn’t over vaccines, but molluscs. Brussels won’t grant Britain a special export health licence for the trade of ‘live bivalve molluscs’ unless they are purified first. The problem is, once they’ve been purified they have to be eaten within 48 hours, which gives them too short a shelf life to be practical for export.

This affects the trade of cockles, clams and mussels, but if the beleaguered British shellfish industry were to collapse, I think I’d be saddest about the oysters. Ours are some of the finest in the world. It’s no coincidence that three of London’s most famous restaurants — J. Sheekey, Rules and Wheeler’s — all began as oyster bars. Yet Britain is, for a maritime country, oddly uninterested in seafood. In part it’s a PR problem. The French are proud of their Fine de Claire oysters, and rightly so.