Complete and Utter Zebu

“Our sushi is delivered every day, spankingly fresh.” What would you assume from that claim on Pret a Manger’s website? Probably not that it is farmed salmon trout from Chile, which has been frozen and sent 7,000 miles by sea to the UK, where it’s prepared and packaged.

Today’s Sunday Telegraph reveals that the fish farms of Chile do not have to adhere to the same tough standards as EU producers. According to Willie Mackenzie of Greenpeace, “If you are going to eat farmed fish then you should avoid farmed fish from Chile at all costs. Not only are the farms and feed factories polluting, plagued with disease and trashing local ecosystems and livelihoods but it just makes no sense at all to transport fish or fish meal halfway around the world.”

“Avoid farmed fish from Chile at all costs…The farms and feed factories (are) polluting, plagued with disease and trashing local ecosystems and livelihoods.”

The Sunday Telegraph points out that the fish, sold not only by Pret but also by Waitrose, who use the same supplier, comes from one of the more respectable Chilean producers. Pret say that under EU law, fish served raw has to be frozen, wherever it comes from, in order to kill off parasites.

But the story exposes, yet again, the appalling truth that consumers cannot tell where the food they buy comes from. There is no indication on the packaging as to the origin of Pret’s Deluxe Sushi. There does not need to be. Under current law, food can be described as “British” if the “last substantial change” in the processing system happens in the UK. That’s how you can have curries “produced in the United Kingdom” with meat that comes from the hideously intensive poultry sheds of Thailand.

Complete and Utter Zebu has plenty of other examples like this. The situation would be ludicrous, if it were not so scary. With over half our food now imported, it is vital that consumers are able to make an informed choice.

How can we do that if they won’t even tell us where the main ingredient of processed food comes from?