FISH. Not an animal generally associated with great passion or emotion. But you'd have to be made of stone not to have been moved by this week's Hugh's Fish Fight.

We foodies thought we knew what to expect from this programme - sustainable fishing, dolphin friendly tuna, eat coley not cod and so on.

But nothing had quite prepared me for the shocking, appalling genuinely heartbreaking waste of life that is our current fishing system.

For those who didn't see it (and if you missed it you can watch it on catch up tv here), Hugh went out with some Scottish trawler fishermen. They're allowed, by the EU, to catch a certain amount of cod each year, in a bid to conserve stocks. After they reach their quota, set under the Common Fisheries Policy, it's against the law for them to land (ie bring to shore) any more cod).

They catch quite a lot of cod and reach their quota pretty quickly. But fish don't segregrate the seas according to species. So when those boats go out to try and catch the fish they DO still have quota for, they still catch cod. LOTS of cod.

Simple, you'd think. They can just through them back as soon as they pull them out of the sea.

But no. Because of the way trawler fishing works, by the time the nets are hauled in, those fish are already dead. They can't be sold. So they just get thrown away.

And we're not just talking a few fish here and there. We're talking more than half the fish caught, every single day - and a North Sea trawler can catch more than 5,000 kg of fish in one haul.

Estimates suggest that more than 1 million tonnes of cod died in fishing nets to no purpose last year, condemmed to be ditched back into the sea.

Meanwhile, closer to home in Hastings, we met the day fishermen who aren't allowed to catch any cod, only pollock.

But the nets you need to catch pollock are made of a mesh narrow enough to catch cod, so catch them they do. Tonnes of them. They can't sell them, so the fishmongers of Hastings buy in cod from Norway while British cod dies and is discarded by the tonne.

It's hard to describe how angry this film makes me. The CFP is well intentioned, to stop cod and other fish species from dying out. But this? this is lunacy. It doesn't conserve stocks, merely ensures millions of fish die each year for no reason.

No-one came out of this programme well. Not the trawlers - because despite their obvious distress at having to throw away perfectly saleable fish I couldn't help but query the wisdom of such an indiscriminate fishing method.

Not the consumers happily queuing for cod and chips in Weymouth's chip shops. (Change our eating habits to include fish you can catch more sustainably, so the argument goes).

And certainly not the EU Common Fisheries Policy, up for review next year and the real target of this campaign.

Our new fisheries minister Richard Benyon at least seemed remarkably keen to change the CFP, but seemed less certain about how, or what the answer is.

So, what can we do? Well, first watch the programme.

Then sign Hugh's petition for a start.

You can Lobby your MP to support Zac Goldsmith's Early Day Motion in parliament.

And finally you can ask your local chip shop to sell mackerel as an alternative.

Do all of them or do one of them. But do something.