Farmer produces sustainable king prawns
in a Lincolnshire field
Most warm water prawns sold in UK are imported from Asia and are tainted
with allegations of slavery and environmental destruction
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Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Lincolnshire
Wed 7 Aug 2019 07.00 BST
At a farm in Lincolnshire two aquaculturists are busy feeding thousands of
larvae in a dozen large tanks designed to emulate a seawater environment.
This is the UK’s first warm water king prawn producer. In less than three
and a half months, each wriggling little creature will grow to weigh 30g,
ready to be harvested and sold to retailers and restaurants. FloGro Fresh is
the first company in Britain to bring Pacific whiteleg prawns fresh to the
market – most prawns consumed in the UK are imported frozen from
India, Vietnam, Thailand, Ecuador or Honduras.
In an industry rife with human trafficking and modern slavery, and
notorious for its destruction of marine ecosystems, FloGro is one farmer’s
attempt to produce farmed prawns that are sustainable.
“The beauty of our operation is that it’s entirely fresh, everything that
comes from overseas has been frozen,” said Ralph Maxwell, FloGro’s
managing director.
The team at FloGro “get the order in the morning, go and harvest it
immediately from the tank and they’re shipped to the customer overnight
and will be in the restaurant the following day. So in less than 24 hours
you have that order.”
“They know exactly where it comes from,” he added. “There is
provenance and there is traceability to everything we do, so if the
customer or chef wants to come and see it they can come up and see the
prawn. We don’t know where the prawns come from in southeast Asia, but
I’m told they come from very dubious places.”
More than 81,000 tonnes of shrimp and prawn (worth £691.8m) are
imported to the UK annually, according to 2017 figures released recently
by Seafish. Only 0.1% of the total volume of species arriving to the UK
from British vessels were shrimps and prawns, according to the report, but
warm water prawns were the sixth best selling seafood species in the
country.
Richard Clarke, production manager at FloGro, is
one of two full-time staff that work on the farm.
Photograph: Saeed Kamali Dehghan/The Guardian
The Marine Conservation Society has given a thumbs up to FloGro’s
methods of production and sustainability. Its closed-loop aquaculture
system uses renewable energy – a combination of rooftop solar panels and
wind power from Lincolnshire.
750 cubic metres of water, heated via a biomass boiler fed with wood
pellets to ensure it remains at 28C (82F) at all times, is filtered and
recycled robustly. Prawn poo is spread on land as fertiliser.
A major issue with intensive prawn farming in places like Asia is the use of
polluting chemicals and antibiotics. According to the Environmental
Justice Foundation, “the production of prawns can be responsible for
serious environmental degradation, such as the destruction of mangroves,
wetlands and coral reefs, destruction of marine and coastal biodiversity
and mass drowning of sea turtles and other protected species. It has also
been linked to human rights abuses, such as child, forced and bonded
labour, intimidation, violence and even murder.”
Neil Campbell, head chef at Yotam Ottolenghi’s Fitzrovia restaurant Rovi,
said the restaurant’s relationship with the farm was key in choosing their
product.
“I can pick the phone up and speak with Ralph, talk about prawn sizes,
weight, feeding habits, quality and so on,” he said. “Prawns arrive fresh
and in superb quality. [It is reassuring] that the prawns and staff there are
getting a good life.”
Campbell said FloGro’s sustainable farming methods were equally
important. “The system which Ralph and his team use is state of the art.
With the ever growing world population and rising food consumption, our
sea life is under threat. We need farms that can produce it [in the right
way].”
FloGro receives a shipment of 150,000 larvae from the US every four to
five weeks. Boxes containing baby shrimps in highly oxygenated pure
seawater arrive at Heathrow. The larvae go through an acclimatisation
period before being placed in blue tanks filled with salted water, known as
nursery tanks. They stay there for 28 days, growing from 0.003g to 0.03g.
Another 28 days are spent in six intermediary tanks where they grow to 2–
3g each. They spend the rest of their lives in 12 concrete “grow-out” tanks.
In contrast with conventionally farmed prawns in Asia and Latin America,
which are often fed with fishmeal obtained through illegal fishing, FloGro
prawns are fed with fishmeal from France that is sourced from off-cuts
from human consumption.
In Asia farmed prawn are often fed with fishmeal
obtained by illegal fishing. Photograph: FORGET
Patrick/Alamy Stock Photo
“We’re not killing fish to put in our prawns, it’s only the waste product
from human consumption,” said production manager Richard Clarke.
Born in Lincolnshire, Clarke studied aquaculture and fisheries
management and is now one of two full-time staff on the farm. Two parttimers help at the weekend.
The prawns are harvested twice a week. They stop feeding 24 hours before
so the back vein is empty when they are harvested, making life easier for
chefs. The prawns die instantly when put into iced water. They are then
vacuum-packed and kept chilled until they are ready to be delivered. They
cost £20 per kilo.
Maxwell said the response to the British prawns has been overwhelming.
“Our problem is that we can’t supply enough,” he said. The company is
now focusing on setting up its own hatchery to increase production.
FloGro, set up in 2015, is also looking at ways to sell an important
byproduct of the prawn shells: chitosan, which can be used in cosmetics
and pharmaceuticals. Every two to three weeks, prawns shed their shells.
“A lot of restaurants have stopped selling imported prawns because they
don’t know where they come from,” said Maxwell. “The consumer drives
the marketplace and is becoming far more sophisticated. They want to
know where the prawn has come from, so that’s a big plus for us. That is
why there is a potential to grow our industry in the UK.”
The headline on this article was amended on 16 August 2019 because an
earlier version described the prawn farming process as ethical, when
sustainable was meant.
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Topics
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Seascape: the state of our oceans
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