An Ethical Enterprise
Protecting British Rivers
As a company we try to be as ethical as we possibly can. I mean why wouldn’t you. The industry we’re in lends itself for us to do just that. Read on and we’ll explain how…
Rivers/water – We have been granted a rare license to abstract clean water from the river, which is then filtered back out from our building through natural reed beds before rejoining the source.
This means the abstracted water is recycled back into the waterways from whence it came, so none of the precious stuff is wasted and can go on supporting British aquatic life.
Crayfish – Signal crayfish were introduced by the British Government in the late 1970’s, and it has become one of the biggest ecological disasters. They destroy fish life, plant life and river banks. So by removing them from the eco system, we are doing British aquatic life a huge favour.
Even though they are a pest and an invasive species we still wish to cause the fish themselves the least possible stress.
One, it makes them taste nicer for the consumer, but also we want to be as kind as possible to our fellow creatures of the planet. We take a number of steps to do this.
Fresh from the river as they wait to be processed our fish are kept in our specially built covered tanks, all using the very same chalk stream water they were caught from. Thus causing minimal stress for the animals themselves.
Before cooking, we also humanely despatch our crayfish. We have our own specially designed stunning machine (EA approved) built for this job. It’s instant, and the fish don’t feel a thing, and it’s much more humane than the industry standard of boiling the poor critters alive.
Protecting British Wildlife
Crayfish are the hyenas of the British waterways, so by us catching them and you eating them you’re really helping young fish, our native species, plant life and our rivers!
Traps – Protecting British species is a big thing for us. The River Kennet is a haven for water voles (a protected species) so minimising our impact on the habitat is key.
All of our traps we make ourselves and they are Environment Agency approved.
They all have guards designed to stop otters and water voles getting trapped and drowning. In 20 years of trapping not a single water vole has perished because of this.
Not only this we also have specially designed our traps with a coned-end to ensure maximum protection for the natural plant life in our rivers, which can otherwise often get pulled up along with the crayfish.
Packaging – We wanted to reduce the impact our packaging had on the planet as much as we could. Therefore we use CPET trays in the making of our meals.
These are made from fully recyclable materials and produced with a market-leading recycled post-consumer content. On average, the post-consumer recycled content in our CPET trays is more than 80%. The trays we use can then be recycled into new food-grade trays again and again. This allows for true circularity in our choice of packaging.
Food Waste – we endeavour to try and use every possible part of the crayfish in our production.
