Bought some snap frozen prawns in Geraldton the other day, one of Australia’s preeminent fishing cities.
The chatty chap who sold me the prawns told me a fascinating story.
The prawn I was buying had been caught, not in WA, but off Townsville in Queensland. They had been snap frozen raw and shipped to China – yep! China! Where the worlds only automatic shelling and deveining machine lives.
Apparently most shelled prawns go to China to their one off machine.
After the China treatment the prawns are shipped back to Townsville, then on to Geraldton in WA where I thought I was buying a prawn caught “just out there” on the lovely, wild deep blue Indian Ocean and sold through the local outlet, literally on the docks!
A prawn about the size of my thumb has a carbon footprint about the size of a house! How ethical is that? How can we know these things? What should we do about it? Can we do anything anyway?
Just goes to show there’s more to a raw prawn than you might think.
