Text 14679, 106 rader
Skriven 2008-10-04 11:45:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Bad shrimp 2
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Tiger or 'king' prawns and their siblings have become a staple of
Britain's supermarkets. The result? Ever-falling prices, but
increasing use of chemicals and dropping quality.

The chemicals used in these production systems  -  which pack 20
prawns into one square metre of foul, endlessly recycled water  -
have been shown again and again to harm the workers involved, the
environment and very possibly the consumers.

Yet shoppers are more in love with tiger prawns than ever. Tropical
farmed prawns are now Britain's fifth most popular seafood. Sales
were up 14 per cent last year  -  and we now spend œ169 million a
year on them, four times as much as we spend on frozen burgers.

At Marks & Spencer, which has seen a 20 per cent increase in king
prawn sales, a spokesman told me tropical prawns are 'so
fashionable' because they are 'a light and healthy option'.

Enthusiastic endorsement from celebrity chefs has helped the boom -
Gordon Ramsay recently salivated over king prawn and wonton soup on
The F Word, while Jamie Oliver suggested a recipe for them on
skewers.

Light and healthy? I think about this as we follow Mr Huong past a
litter of prawn-feed bags to the pond, which measures 400 square
metres - about the size of two tennis courts.

It was once the family's ancestral rice paddy, and at this time of
year the growing seedlings should be turning the landscape a
brilliant yellow-green. But the pond - like all the others nearby  -
is now a viscous grey, like old washing-up water.

Mr Huong paddles off in a small boat, scattering the feed he mixed
earlier. A system of paddle wheels, driven by a diesel engine, lies
ready to stir up the water and bring oxygen to the shellfish packed
beneath. There are 80,000 of them below the surface.

Back on the dyke, he dips a net into the opaque water, and pulls up
a few of the animals to weigh them and inspect them for deformities.
They are two months old, and about the size of my index finger.

The Huongs - again, like all their neighbours - opened the dykes and
turned to prawn farming because of the fantastic profits available.

A field that would have provided enough rice for the family to eat,
plus a little extra to sell for essentials, has become a
life-changing asset. If this crop is successful, the Huongs will
sell the prawns for œ8,000  -  if prices hold up  -  after only four
months.

This is an enormous amount in a country where many rural people
still survive on less than œ1 a day. As a result, rice farmers have
now become chemists, experts in the complex biology of intensively
farmed prawns.

Across the dykes, we see men and women in conical hats dipping
testtubes in the water, checking acidity levels and examining prawns
in test nets for the dreaded signals of disease: reddening shells,
mis-shapen bodies, white spots on their legs.

The prawns, packed into the ponds, are terribly prone to illness. Mr
Huong's last batch of prawn larvae all died after a month  -  he
doesn't know why. Indeed, white-spot virus almost killed off the
entire industry in Vietnam two years ago.

Having gambled everything on prawns, people will do anything to
protect their investment. That includes using any chemicals that may
seem to help.

'Often we get consignments of antibiotics for human use that are
past the date they can be used by,' a villager told me.

On the main road out of town, near Mr Huong's farm, there is a
government sign. Under a vivid picture of jars, bottles and dead
prawns, it lists all the chemicals that prawn farmers must not use -
51 of them.

They include many human antibiotics, penicillins, and some names I
recognise from the bad days of the European fish-farming industry -
nitrofuran, chloramphenicol and organophosphate pesticides.

This poster shows the efforts the Vietnamese government has been
taking to educate farmers. But when everything hinges on a
successful crop, it is inevitable that some are willing to take
risks.

Back in Britain, I ran the long list of chemicals we had found in
use at Mr Huong's prawn farm past Peter Bridson, who is in charge of
aquaculture at the Soil Association. Nothing we had found surprised
him.

'You see this repeatedly in industrial aquaculture. There's a
get-rich-quick attitude. Everyone follows the boom, but one false
step and it crashes. And disease is usually the problem.'

Most of the chemicals we photographed in Mr Huong's shed are
pesticides, feed enhancers and growth stimulants.

Cheers

YK Jim


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