Supermarket flies fish 5,000 miles from country where millions are starving

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."