Prawn de-shelling outsourced

Young's, a seafood firm in Scotland, has decided to send the prawns it catches all the way to Thailand, where the prawns will be de-shelled by hand. Then the entire thing comes back all the way to the UK to be sold.

Prawn shellers in Thailand cost as low as 25p per hour, versus the Scotland rate of £5 per hour or so. Machine shelling doesn't provide the high quality of scampi they need, and hand shelling is too expensive in Scotland. So they've decided to send the stuff 19,000 km. away to Thailand and bring it back.

The carbon dioxide emitted by the travel is supposed to be huge, say environmentals, who evidently know their carbon dioxide from other natural gases. The company could offset this by purchasing carbon credits with a £350,000 cost, it seems.

Think of it. Someone is sending prawns over 19,000 km of sea, to hand shell them at such a low cost that the travel is worth it. Outsourcing gone wild.

Of course it causes a loss of a few jobs in Scotland, but that can't be worse than this or this.