January 16, 2017 — PARIS — That smoked salmon you bought for the New Year’s festivities has a story to tell.
The salmon may have been raised in Scotland — but it probably began life as roe in Norway.
Harvested at a coastal farm, the fish may have been sent to Poland to be smoked.
It may even have travelled halfway around the world to China to be sliced.
It eventually arrived, wrapped in that tempting package, in your supermarket.
Globalisation has changed the world in many ways, but fish farming is one of the starkest examples of its benefits and hidden costs.
The nexus of the world fish-farming trade is China — the biggest exporter of fish products, the biggest producer of farmed fish and a major importer as well.
With battalions of lost-cost workers, linked to markets by a network of ocean-going refrigerated ships, China is the go-to place for labour-intensive fish processing.
In just a few clicks on Alibaba, the Chinese online trading hub, you can buy three tonnes of Norwegian filleted mackerel shipped from the port city of Qingdao for delivery within 45 days.
“There is a significant amount of bulk frozen fish sent to China just for filleting,” said a source from an association of importers in an EU country.
“The temperature of the fish is brought up to enable the filleting but the fish are not completely defrosted.”
The practice has helped transform the Chinese coastal provinces of Liaoning and Shandong into global centres for fish processing.