The 17,000-mile round trip that costs the earth
news.scotsman.com
Firm cuts 120 jobs in Scotland to send seafood to Thailand for UK shops Environmentalist say damage to Earth will cost £2m to £2.5m a year Shellfish to be shipped to Thailand where workers are paid 25p per hour Key quote "Very little could better sum up the environmental madness of modern globalisation than the nearly 17,000-mile round trip that will be taken by Young's scampi before it even arrives at the supermarket distribution depot" - Duncan McLaren, Friends of the Earth Scotland chief executive
Story in full SCOTTISH langoustines are to be sent on a 17,000-mile round trip to Thailand for processing before being sold in the UK as scampi, in a move dismissed as "environmental madness" by critics.
Young's Seafood said it was cutting 120 jobs at its Scottish factory as part of plans to send 120,000 tonnes of langoustines - caught in Scottish waters - across the world, where they will be hand-peeled by cheap labour, re-packed and then shipped back to Scotland.
Unions reacted with anger yesterday at the threatened loss of jobs to Bangkok, where workers will be paid as little as 25p per hour, while environmentalists hit out at the cost to the environment of the unnecessary transport. It is estimated the scampi trade will produce 47,500 tonnes of CO2 based on the fuel consumed by an average freighter.
The cost of "offsetting" this with a carbon-trading scheme, which would fund renewable energy schemes, tree planting or other environmental improvements, would be about £350,000, but environmentalists said the real cost of the damage caused to the environment would be more like between £2 million and £2.5 million a year.
The jobs are to go at Young's manufacturing plant at Annan, where until now all deshelling has been done by machine. The firm says it is planning to develop the market for langoustines, which reportedly taste better if shelled by hand. Under the new plans, the langoustines will be caught and graded in Scotland, then packed in frozen containers and shipped, most likely from Greenock, to Bangkok. There, Young's parent company, Findus, has a processing plant and the produce will be de-shelled by hand.
Afterwards, they will be shipped back to the Annan plant, where they will be cooked and breaded. The company argues that as scampi tails are always matured in cold storage for up to three weeks prior to being cooked and breaded, it is convenient for this to take place while at sea.
Last night, Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Very little could better sum up the environmental madness of modern globalisation than the nearly 17,000-mile round trip that will be taken by Young's scampi before it even arrives at the supermarket distribution depot.
"The environmental impacts - even of sea-freight - stack up: in this case perhaps as much as 50,000 tonnes a year more emissions.
"According to the Stern report, the social costs of damage from are £50 a tonne - thus the public is picking up a £2.5 million-a-year bill because of the misguided trade and transport policies of Scotland and the UK's political leaders."
The move was also criticised by Jason Torrance, campaigns director at Transport 2000, a UK organisation that campaigns for sustainable transport. He said: "Local production of food is part of the solution in tackling climate change, preserving jobs and boosting our economy."
In September Dawnfresh, another Scottish seafood company, cut 70 jobs at its Uddingston plant and began shipping prawns to China for part-processing, before shipping them back to Scotland for sale.
Mike Mitchell, director of scampi for Young's, responded last night: "We are an international business committed to high standards of practices and wherever possible we will select seafood suppliers that are able to catch, farm and undertake primary processing locally round the world.
"In this particular case, I believe the decision to ship to Thailand will produce long-term benefits for one of the UK's best- managed fisheries - a benefit that in this case outweighs the environmental impact of transporting that product by sea."
However, John Holroyd, regional industrial organiser for the TGWU union, said: "We are devastated; the whole town will be because the factory is synonymous with Annan. My own view is that this is the politics of the absurd, it's global capitalism gone absolutely mad."
Elaine Murray, the local MSP, said: "While I understand that this makes commercial sense for the companies involved, it doesn't make environmental sense to ship shellfish caught in UK waters halfway around the world for hand-peeling and then ship the product back for sale here."
Dr Campbell Gemmell, chief executive of the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, said he did not know enough about this case to comment specifically, but added: "There is a bigger debate here which is about the price of carbon. The impacts on our environment aren't free - there is a cost, although that historically has been ignored. A real cost for the use for carbon might just help us to get more sensible decisions on resource-use and the impacts the environment has to bear." |
