Angry People

My partner and I have recently been researching how we can not just ‘put our money where our mouths are’ but actually ‘vote with our hard-earned’ in support of our ethical principles.

While we accept that in the modern world, some level of compromise is often necessary, we are aiming to take (or create) as many opportunities as possible to source our normal shopping from providers that can demonstrate their products have been produced, and brought to market, in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.

The first stop in our research has been The Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping. This has given us much food for thought (sorry, no pun intended) especially in the area of prawn production - an area we had not considered before.

The prawns in question are none other than the big juicy tiger prawns that have found favour in many peoples modern diets. Unfortunately, some organisations believe that their cultivation is linked to serious destruction of the local environment and has negative consequences for the local people.

To cultivate the prawns, large man-made pools are dug and filled from local water sources. Each kilo of prawns requires an estimated 50,000 litres of water to produce. Salt, fishmeal food, antibiotics, growth stimulants and lime are added to the water. I’m sure you can imagine the effect of this water, containing all these additives, filtering back into agricultural land leaving it unproductive as well as polluting water sources.

As we have come to expect these days, someone is getting rich out of this and so the World Bank and other international agencies have encouraged this industry.

Farmed prawns are not the only problem as sea caught prawns have their own guilty story to tell. These are caught by trawling a fine net over the sea bed which damages the sea bed and catches everything else in its path, including turtles and other endangered sea life.

A factoid for you from The Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping:

According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, prawn trawling accounts for a third of the world’s bycatch but produces only a fiftieth of its seafood.

So, try and avoid prawns unless you know they are from a wild and guaranteed sustainable source.