The VERY unsavoury truth about your prawn cocktail... and that supposedly fresh fish on the supermarket counter



Mislabelled fish at Tesco

'Fresh' fish at Asda that was previously frozen

... and prawns stored in sewage

What lies within? A prawn cocktail salad

We British, an island race, have always loved our fish. UK consumers spent more than £5.5billion on seafood in 2009 alone.



Fish and chips is up there with roast beef, vying for top spot as our national dish.

Yet key aspects of this global ­business raise ­serious questions about the fish we consume in Britain today: the way it is produced, stored and sold by supermarkets and ­restaurants; how it is labelled and the ­sustainability of fish stocks.

I investigated the state of Britain’s fish trade for a Channel 4 ­Dispatches documentary, and unearthed many practices that were shocking to say the least — not to mention downright dishonest.



We uncovered thousands of healthy fish being thrown back into the sea to die off the British coast, prawns destined for British supermarkets being stored in sewage, ‘scampi’ made from waste scraps glued together with chemicals, and ‘fresh’ fish that is anything but.

Even our favourite cod and chip supper didn’t stand up to ­scrutiny. There are around 10,000 chippies selling more than 250million ­portions of fish and chips every year in Britain. But not all are what they seem.

Trading standards officers in Worcestershire and other areas have recently prosecuted chippies for claiming to sell cod when in fact the fish was pangasius — a Vietnamese catfish also known as river cobbler.



This is a much cheaper option — the wholesale price is almost half that of cod. And nobody knows how widespread the fraud is.

The price of cod has risen sharply over the past few years, and the EU has enforced strict quotas on fishing for it in British waters.

The Common Fisheries Policy means boats can only land a certain quota of fish per season. Once they’ve done so, any more cod, haddock, plaice or other desirable fish that are caught above this quota are simply thrown back.

The time they have spent out of the water, along with the change in pressure after having been dragged up from the deep sea, means that most of them are already dead or will die once thrown back.

If it sounds horrendously wasteful, the irony is that it’s intended to ­preserve fish stocks by protecting them from overfishing.

But since boats cannot help but catch all kinds of fish when they put down their trawling nets, this ­terrible waste of precious fish ­continues unabated.

Now, the EU estimates that in the North Sea between 40 and 60 per cent of the fish landed by British vessels is being thrown back.

So what of those fish that are landed and enter the human food chain? How sure can we be that we are ­eating what the label says we are: surely we can trust the big supermarkets —can’t we?

Today, it is relatively easy to DNA-test fish samples from supermarkets, though of course no shopper has the time or resources to do this.

But we did.

Staple diet: More than 250million portions of fish and chips are sold in Britain every year - from 10,000 chippies. But can you be sure what you're getting?

And we can now reveal that the ­biggest British supermarket of them all — Tesco — falls seriously short of the mark on the vital consumer issue of correct labelling on its cod products.

We tested more than 20 samples of Tesco fish labelled as cod. When the results came back, they revealed almost a fifth were mislabelled.



Four products said to be the plentiful Pacific cod were in fact Atlantic cod — a quite different species. Stocks of Atlantic cod are much more ­threatened and dreadfully over-fished. Yet four of 21 samples ­claiming to be ‘caught in the Pacific Ocean’ were no such thing.

This is very worrying because if shoppers want to make an environmental decision when buying fish, they have no choice but to trust the label. Tesco’s products said they were ‘responsibly sourced’. Yet it was ­selling one fish as another.

When we put our findings to Tesco, a spokesman said: ‘Unfortunately on this occasion we were provided with incorrect information by our supplier. This has now been rectified and we are sorry for the error.’



Boats can only land a certain quota of fish per season. Once they’ve done so, any more cod, haddock, plaice or other desirable fish that are caught above this are thrown back





Tesco went on to say it is ‘absolutely confident’ its fish comes from responsibly managed stocks and are fully traceable. But if the labelling is wrong in the first place, how can any product be traceable?

And the problems in our biggest supermarkets do not end there.

We all love the idea of buying fresh fish from those enticing beds of ice littered with sprigs of parsley and slices of lemon.



Again, things are not quite as they seem. In the course of my investigations, I ­discovered that Asda — one of our biggest supermarkets — sells ‘fresh’ fish which has been ­previously frozen (this only becomes apparent if you read the small print). Surely if shoppers ­realised this, they wouldn’t be so keen to buy from these counters?

To test this theory, we set up our own ‘fresh fish’ counter at a shopping centre in Shepherds Bush, West ­London, and replicated the display method used by Asda.



When the ­‘previously frozen’ labelling was pointed out to customers, they were appalled and refused to buy the fish. ‘It shouldn’t be on this counter,’ said one. ‘Especially as I have to put my glasses on to read the label.’

When we put this to Asda it did finally admit that its fish could be more clearly displayed. But it is not the only guilty party. Tesco does much the same. It has products which read ‘may have been previously ­frozen’ on the small print, while the fish is ­positioned close to conspicuous and much bigger signs offering ‘fresh fish’.

Clearly they are confident they are not breaching food regulations or laws. But since the term ‘fresh’ means not frozen to most of us, why can’t the supermarkets just make clear exactly what they are selling?

Another worrying element of the fish business which emerged was in the way fish are moved around the world, from ocean to kitchen.

Few consumers, I expect, will realise the process fish go through to reach their plate.

Barmy: EU Common Fisheries Policy means fishermen are forced to throw some of their dead haul back into the water. Ironically, the rules are supposed to promote sustainability

The currency of international fish trading is called the ‘block’. Simply, blocks of 7.5kg filleted or minced fish are freighted around the world every day. Some will pass through several owners and can be stored for anywhere between three and nine months (or more) before being sold on.

It is left up to the traders themselves how long the fish stay frozen. So long as it is fit for human consumption, it can go to our supermarkets at any point. Some of the fish from these ­frozen blocks can even be defrosted and sold to consumers in chilled supermarket aisles, which many of us think are full of fresh fish.

Only if you check the very small print will you get any inkling that it may have been previously frozen.

In one notorious cold storage case, Lincolnshire food officials found a warehouse full of fish which was over five years old





In one notorious cold storage case, Lincolnshire food officials found a warehouse full of fish which was over five years old.

The place was crawling with ­maggots and rats. Over 200 tons of fish ended up being destroyed and the owner was prosecuted and last year given a suspended prison ­sentence.

So what actually goes into the fish products we buy in Britain’s ­supermarkets? Well, the picture here is just as worrying. Take that other British favourite: scampi.

Traditional scampi simply demands the tails of Dublin Bay prawns, deep fried in that familiar crispy light batter coat. But, of course, life is far from that simple in the fish business.

For starters, much of the scampi we eat is actually ‘reformed scampi’. This budget model is made from leftover scraps of prawn put together with that well-known kitchen ingredient — sodium tripolyphosphate.

When I tried my hand at making reformed scampi I had to handle this chemical with rubber gloves and a face-mask. On its container you cannot help but notice the ­hazard symbols.



Closer inspection reveals warnings about decreased blood pressure, decreased heart rate, skin discolouration, vomiting, diarrhoea and coma if ingested in large quantities.

And while nobody is suggesting consumers are going to ingest this industrial chemical irritant in huge quantities through eating scampi, it is a dubious ingredient to use to bind the prawn scraps together — one that nobody would knowingly want on their dinner table.

Fish market: Black scabbard fish on an ice market stall - but questions were raised about hygiene

The problem does not begin and end with reformed scampi.

For industrial phosphates are used — in safe amounts we are told — in a wide variety of fish and ­shellfish products coming into the UK. As well as glueing cheap-end fish ­products together, they also help to add bulk — which explains why you get such alarmingly small quantities of actual scampi for your money.

In Asda’s Scampi Mini-Bites, for example, the total fish content is given at just 37 per cent. Of that, only 47 per cent is scampi. So the overall scampi content in the ­product is a shocking 18 per cent.

Similarly, Sea Spray Wholetail Scampi — sold in most major ­British supermarkets — contains only about one third actual scampi. But hang on: isn’t this ‘Wholetail Scampi?’ Surely this means that the product is whole tails of scampi? Wrong. Under the industry code of practice, if this were the case the label would have to say ‘single wholetails of scampi’.

Only in the British fish business could retailers get away with legally selling ‘Wholetail Scampi’ containing not one single whole tail of scampi at all.

The further away you travel from the UK, the murkier the world of fish trading becomes for the British consumer.

'Fresh fish': Asda admitted products could be more clearly labelled

Take prawns — a big seller in our supermarkets. Fifty thousand tons each year pour into the EU. Some of these are farmed in the prawn pools of Bangladesh, before beginning their long journey to a British dinner plate.

But what is the process by which they are farmed and produced? To find out, we travelled to ­Bangladesh to film undercover at the prawn pools. What we found was truly appalling.

Latrines filled with human waste were sited over the sea water canals, whose contents are swept into the prawn pools with every tide. Stray dogs chewed prawn fragments in the trading market.

One farmer we spoke to routinely doused his pool with a pesticide known as Thiodan, to keep disease down among his prawn stocks.



But this pesticide contains Endosulfan, a substance which is banned in more than 50 countries worldwide, including in the EU. Ingestion in large quantities is linked to numerous human health risks, including paralysis and birth defects.

Industrial phosphates are used - in safe amounts we are told - in a wide variety of fish and ­shellfish products coming into the UK





He told us: ‘Due to virus in the past ten years, the fish die. For this reason I have to use medicine. Thiodan for instance — eight to ten ­bottles — and I spread it in equal portions, evenly over all areas.’

Nobody we spoke to appeared to be aware of any possible dangers from this chemical.

EU officials talk confidently about their regulation and inspection teams working across all the countries from which our seafood is imported. They give a reassuring view of an industry that is well-regulated in Bangladesh.

But the farmers we spoke to said they had never been inspected nor even seen any such inspectors. One said: ‘I can’t tell you the rules, but nobody comes here for inspection.’

Bangladeshi exporters themselves are fond of talking about ‘trace­ability’ — knowing exactly where the fish you eat has come from, how it was produced and so forth.



On the ground in ­Bangladesh, things are rather different. One middle-man in this chain — a trader who buys directly from the farmers and sells the prawns on to UK exporters, said: ‘The fish I buy are from different areas and not kept separate. All the fish are mixed together. They’re kept together and sold together.’

No wonder then, that if you go to official websites listing seizures of seafood products coming into the UK because food safety regulations have been broken or suspicions aroused, you will find Bangladesh as country of origin over and over again.

Prawns arriving from Bangladesh are subject to extra inspections and tests for banned chemicals. However, those chemicals do not include Endosulfan, which we actually found being used in Bangladesh.

All this is just another disturbing example of how the international trade really works. From ­production and storage through to the shelves in our supermarkets, when it comes to fish, what you think you’re ­buying might not be what you are buying at all.