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Supermarket flies fish 5,000 miles from country where millions are starving
Last updated at 15:52pm on 03.01.08A major supermarket chain has outraged human rights activists by selling fish from Zimbabwe.
The campaigners said it is wrong to fly in food more than 5,000 miles from a country where millions are on the brink of starvation.
They are planning to mount protests at Waitrose outlets, all of which stock the Zimbabwean tilapia fillets.
Buyers for the chain say that selling the fleshy white fish helps preserve threatened species such as cod.
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It is not known whether Robert Mugabe's dictatorial regime has benefited from any share in the deal through business taxes and export levies.
Last night, Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean, a UK-based newspaper, said: "People are starving in Zimbabwe. There is no food in the shops, there is no fish to be had there for the ordinary people.
"It's incredibly cruel taking food out of the mouths of starving people. It is very ill-advised of Waitrose. It is morally wrong.
"I find it very disturbing that they are taking fish from Zimbabwe at a time when millions are starving and surviving purely on international aid."
Professor Terence Ranger, president of the Britain Zimbabwe Society and a fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, said: "Zimbabwe has a tremendous food shortage. It seems inappropriate for food of any sort from there being exported here.
"But on the other hand, Zimbabwe is badly in need of cash for hospitals and schools and it is a question of where this money is going."
Leaders of the Zimbabwe Vigil Coalition - human rights group with 16,000 members - are discussing a possible protest against Waitrose.
Dennis Benton, a spokesman, said: "We will try to arrange a vigil against Waitrose to protest against this. This is completely wrong."
Despite widespread condemnation of the Mugabe regime, there are no restrictions on the import and export of food.
Instead, there is an arms embargo and an order freezing of the assets of the dictator and 131 of his associates.
Zimbabwe once had a thriving agricultural-based economy but food production collapsed after Mugabe's land seizure from white farmers in 2000.
The country now suffers from critical food and fuel shortages, rampant inflation, chronic unemployment. It also has an appalling record of violent political repression and human rights abuses.
Waitrose's critics also pointed out that flying the tilapia fish 5,160 miles to Britain from a farm on Lake Kariba is bad for the environment. They said supplies should instead be bought in from the Netherlands.
Dara Grogan, a Waitrose spokesman, said that Zimbabwean tilapia - which sells at £11.99 a kilo - is of higher quality than elsewhere and from a sustainable source.
"This is a question of trying to encourage our customers to try species that aren't threatened but are just as tasty as cod," she said.
"Secondly, we source the tilapia from a fair trade supplier called Lake Harvest, which is majority-owned by native Zimbabweans.
"The company and its tilapia product contribute directly to the support of 450 workers and their dependants."
She said Lake Harvest pays workers substantially more than the minimum basic wage and offers performance pay, pension schemes and medical insurance.
"In Zimbabwe in the current political climate it's not unrealistic that each wage earner will be supporting up to 20 people," she said.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "There are no restrictions on a UK supermarket stocking Zimbabwean produce."
Reader views (12)
million% inflation rate in zim. Fish food and other inputs would have to imported and paid for in forex since the ideologicaly sound but never viable "land reform" consistently failed to produce a crop(to feed fish). If your paying for supplies in stable currency is it not reasonable to avoid converting your investment into useless zim$ by selling locally at a loss due to market regulation. zim government tried to control inflation by forcing retailers to half thier prices all well and good untill you find thier prices make a loss on every item sold. the result limited subsidised goods on shelfs.
Pressuring retailers to drop this product will only serve to make this company bust or leave the tiny part of zim that is still productive economically unviable.
The potential in that country is huge most of its lands are laying idle that is the true crime and the reason why people are starving.
- ..., england
If Waitrose doesn't support this industry it is not like the uncaught fish are going to jump out the lake onto the plates of starving Zimbabweans. This industry supports thousands who would otherwise be starving victims of Mugabe's regime.
But, Waitrose should be looking closely at where the profits really go. To say the supplier is "majority-owned by native Zimbabweans" doesn't mean much if those native Zimbabweans are government fat cats.
- Phileas, Cambridge
"Three shipments (of fish) are sent (from Zimbabwe) to Europe every week."
White meat? Good for the EU (and the UK)! Healthy food does give birth to a healthy society!
Moral: The non-EU tasty 'tilapia' fish is better than the non-EU (stranger) immigrants.
- Nadeem Asghar, London, UK.
Waitrose is merely importing a fish that will preserve cod stocks and the jobs of those very few Zimbabwean workers who have jobs, thanks to a tyrant allowed to stay in power by African inaction.
To haul a UK supermarket over the coals for this is daft beyond belief: the way to get more food into Zimbabwean citizens is to effect a regime and retore liberty in the country.
- John Ward, Lyme Regis,Dorset
It is not at all like the situation in Ireland, which was a directly ruled colony of England at the time, and had suffered a series of catastrophic crop failures which were no-one's fault. Zimbabwe is a self-governed former colony where the actions of a lunatic dictator have ensured that prosperous farms have been handed to his cronies to ruin and their owners forced out or murdered.
To draw comparisons between Waitrose's trade and the mis-management of the Irish famine by the British government is unhistorical and incorrect. I am Irish and I shall continue to shop at Waitrose.
- Sarah N., London
I think people always get high for nothing...so are you calling for economic sabotage for Zimbabwe? Mugabe will never leave power on a British request, and Africans would never give MDC the right to rule since they are puppet organisations of the West! Why did you not call for action on R.G in the 80s?
Same as the demonition process of Zuma in SA whom a lot fear for his pro-Workers policies, look Africans are tired of Western Hypocracy...if you stop trade in Zimbabwe then what? People should die,
The situation in Zimbabwe only came a big foreign story after the farm seizure!
- Yemurai Terema, London
That's right. Throw the 450 workers and their families out onto the streets. All to assuage the faux-guilt of champagne Marxists and their lunatic (eviron)mentalist fellow-travellers.
- Ollie, London
It's Ireland all over again. Yes, I'm sure the Victorians thought it was good for the economy of Ireland to buy their food. Kind of hard to appreciate that sentiment when you watch your children starve to death.
- Kathleen, Connecticut, USA
Much of our food is imported from "poorer" countries where the local population are on far too few calories to thrive.
- Mike, Bedford England
Whilst I agree with your sentiment, Zimbabwe of all countries, needs an economy and exports at this time and if anything we should be looking to Zimbabwe to produce more for the open market.
- Blueplanet, London, UK
This is nothing new. During the Irish potato famine when the hundreds were dying of starvation, the country was exporting beef to England. It was of course too expensive for the poor to buy.
- Patrick Griffin, Dalston
It sounds to me as if this fish is being farmed specifically for export to the West. Quite likely if the fish farmers had to sell their product in Zimbabwe, they would simply go out of business, at least now they are getting hard currency to support themselves, their families and their workers.
If Waitrose cancels their order for this fish, I very much doubt that anyone associated with fish farming in Zimbabwe would be thanking the "Zimbabwe Vigil Coalition" - and the fish farms will go the way of the rest of the country's food production.
What is Professor Terence Ranger a professor of? Not of Economics I would guess.
- Tim, London
