Most prawns on British retailers’ shelves are not from where they say they are, new research has revealed.
Research by non-profit World Forest ID found just 16% of farmed prawns at western supermarkets were from the country labelled on packs.
The study chemically analysed farmed prawns from Ecuador, Honduras and Thailand using stable isotope and trace element analysis to reveal 84% of retail products exhibited low assignment accuracy, “suggesting either post-processing alteration or false/fraudulent labelling of origin”.
“This stuff’s not coming from where you think it is,” said World Forest ID executive director Jade Saunders. “Which is a pretty profound indicator that all of those assumptions you’re making as a consumer are on shaky ground.”
She added: ”The surety around slavery and deforestation risks, the expectations around chemical additives and pollution… it opens up a suite of risks.”
Saunders asserted that certified higher-welfare farmed prawns from Honduras and Ecuador were being mixed with those from countries with less-stringent production standards – many in Asia – to charge a premium price.
With 24 out of the 51 packs tested from major British retailers, the findings fundamentally undermined UK retailers’ sustainability commitments: rendering purchasing policies “meaningless”, according to Saunders.
“The retailers are paying a premium for certified products, the consumers are paying a premium for certified products, but it’s very rare to find any evidence that that is being passed all the way back to the producer,” she said.
Saunders added: “People are buying packaging, buying brands, buying products with an origin claim that indicates a load of things. It’s a symbol of how that product is made and whether that product is going to be good for them.”
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One solution to the problem is that chemical testing to trace products could be brought into the mainstream like in other industries, such as US cotton.
The study found that this method was highly accurate but that future implementation would require “scalable laboratory workflows, continuously updated and geographically expanded reference libraries … and careful consideration of analytical cost and inter-laboratory harmonisation”.
The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) said that the use of chemical signals to confirm where seafood comes from was a “new and exciting area of research”.
ASC is already trialling the use of Trace Element Fingerprinting in Vietnam, but added that “no single tool can provide full assurance”. This was why the certification body was developing complementary digital traceability tools to strengthen supply chain traceability, it said.
”We remain committed to continuously strengthening our assurance programme in line with emerging risks, evolving technologies and best practice,” said an ASC spokesperson. ”The objective is to ensure that when consumers choose ASC-labelled seafood, they can have confidence it is authentic, accurately represented and farmed in accordance with ASC environmental and social standards.”
The British Retail Consortium said retailers adhered to “strong policies” regarding the labelling of their products, including prawns, in line with legislation.
BRC assistant director of food Andrea Martinez Inchausti said they took their responsibilities “very seriously and would not alter labelling practices in any way that could mislead consumers about the sustainability of their products”.
One industry spokesperson also urged caution with the study due to its small sample size. They added that the study was also not designed to provide a representative assessment of shrimp in the wider retail market and excluded several producing countries.
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