I did the tweet to the super market questioning their prawn supplies. Got a response from Tesco stating they had set up a working group.
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Nice...a few years ago I was using prawns a lot in my cooking, readily available cheaper than ever before and let's face it pretty damn tasty. About a year ago it started to dawn on me that something unsustainable could be happening, how could those big juicy tiger prawns suddenly be everywhere?
Now in far away virgin lands, villagers are flooding their fields with salt water in the promise of reaping the demand for prawns in the big economies, only to realise too late that it's the likes of tescos that makes the mega profits and the villagers are left with infertile, flooded fields heavy with pesticides that can no longer be used for anything but prawn farming...producers chained to their trade, just like the big players like it...meanwhile their seas are pillaged for every last remaining bit of protein needed to feed the beast.
So the fields and seas that supported their way of life for generations is, in the space of ten years, gone for the promise of a better life...or a meal at the end of another back breaking day for a man trying to provide the best for his wife and kids. We're seeing it everywhere with our food industry / clothing industry supply chains, those closest to home are happy to pass the issue down the chain until it's out of sight and out of mind.
When the base needs of a man or woman trying to support a family, is the only factor that determines the sustainability of the whole chain, then we have to be worried.
Big economies should put in a system that supports a more sustainable ethical way of doing things, out of sight out of mind simply is not good enough. Problem is can big economies get big thinking that way? That's the challenge that makes a big business a great one and not a modern pseudonym for the slave trade. If they can't be big
and great then it's time to shop elsewhere. For the time being prawns are off the menu in my household...I had to explain this to my girlfriend. She's coming to terms with it
