Cumbrian prawn lines pulled from Asda after Young's alert

Asda has pulled two prawn lines from shelves after discovering they do not meet aquaculture industry standards.

An Asda spokeswoman said the retailer had decided to withdraw the products “for the time being” after its supplier, Young’s Seafood, said it could not be certain the prawns met Best Aquaculture Practice (BAP) scheme standards.

The prawns were supplied through Cumbrian Seafoods, recently acquired by Lion Capital and now part of Young’s.

Young’s said it was currently carrying out a “root and branch” review of Cumbrian’s operations, after finding evidence that some of the products sourced by Cumbrian - before it was taken over by Lion Capital - may have come from BAP-accredited sources but were not, in fact, produced to BAP standards.

The revelation over the supply of prawns to Asda follows a major incident last year when basa lines from Cumbrian were pulled from Asda and Morrisons after the product failed customer audits.

Cumbrian’s administrators PwC later estimated the mistake had cost the company £11m in annual business.