Lobster Is Weapon of Choice as Aldi, Lidi and Now Tesco Battle for Market Share  A battle among UK retailers for lobster customers is in full swing this holiday season now that Tesco has launched its own promotional campaign. The supermarket will be selling whole frozen MSC-certified Canadian-caught lobsters for 6 British Pounds. The promotion goes toe-to-toe with rival grocers Aldi and Lidl. In October Lidl set its holiday feature at $4.99 British pounds for North American lobster. Aldi, meanwhile is currently selling rock lobster tails and plans to offer whole lobsters for 9.99 British Pounds four days before Christmas. Tesco's lobsters will be offered at a larger sized compared to the competition. "Customers are clearly developing a taste for luxury food and this year we are helping to make it even more affordable for them," said Tesco's frozen fish buyer Gary Mannion. In other news John Sackton writes how the FDA threw the Canadian farmed salmon industry under the bus in its decision yesterday to not require genetically modified salmon require a label. The labeling decision was made at the same time the FDA approved the sale of AquaBounty's genetically modified AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon in the US market. The FDA's approval was site specific for Aquabounty's operations in Canada and Panama and essentially forces Canada's traditional salmon growers to distinguish their products from Aquabounty's. "This is a requirement to shoot themselves in the head," writes Sackton. "Consumers do not read labels that carefully and would likely react to the label 'Not genetically engineered' by wondering what is wrong with the product that it has to be labeled that way." Meanwhile, Vietnamese pangasius exporters have seen their returns from sales to China rise 50 percent this year. Strong demand for Vietnamese pangasius in China now has the country on track to be the third largest market for the product behind the US and EU. The European Seafood Producers Organization, Europeche, has slammed WWF for deliberately lying about the state of fish stocks in Europe in an open letter released this week. Europeche's letter explains how Pew's statements directly contradict the scientific consensus in Europe, expressed at the Status of the Stocks meetings in Brussels this past summer. Finally, an atypical surge in mahi imports to the US market in the first quarter of the year has helped keep the wholesale market steady ahead of new season production. The first quarter uptick elevated US mahi shipments to record levels for the 2014-2015 fishing season. Have a great weekend.