Should you stop eating ‘blood avocados’?
Avocado on toast might be off the menu. British and Irish restaurants are increasingly ditching them over concerns that Latin American imports are damaging the environment and funding Mexican drug cartels. Growers in Michoacán, west Mexico, have had their land seized by drug lords who are reported to be earning £150m a year by selling the socalled “blood avocados” to British traders.
The Wild Strawberry Cafe in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, once served 1,000 avocado dishes each week. The owner, Katy Brill, made the “controversial” decision to stop because of ethical concerns over imports, the cartel reports among them. “Primarily I just felt that it didn’t fit with my ethos of using local food,” she says. “If you can eat with the season and source your food locally, that’s always going to be sustainable because it’s not going to have travelled so far.”
Wildflower, a vegetarian restaurant
in Peckham, London, has also dropped avocados over concerns about the effects of the global market. The head chef, Joseph Ryan, sees parallels with quinoa, which became fashionable a few years ago, driving up demand for imports from South America. “There was such a spike in the price of quinoa that [it] became unaffordable for people in their own country, which I think is so wrong,” he says.
Ryan adds that his own interest in avocados has also reached its limit. “I think I probably just peaked. I thought to myself: ‘I’m a bit over this really’.”
The chef JP McMahon, who owns the Michelin-starred restaurant Aniar in Galway, Ireland, says avocados – “the blood diamonds of Mexico” – do not feature on any of his menus due to “air miles, deforestation and problems in Mexico with cartels”. McMahon says consumers need to change their attitudes about seasonal produce. “I think we need to realise what’s in season and when it’s in season. We’ve become completely divorced from that.”
He says it is not hard to avoid avocados and other exotic produce when there are plenty of British and Irish options available. “We have enough products. If you want the vitamins and minerals, kale is a good option. Celeriac, artichokes – they all grow at this time of year.”
Brill agrees, saying it is “crazy” to expect to be able to buy fruit such as strawberries all year round. “I only ever use asparagus when it’s British asparagus season, primarily because it’s a lot better.” And there is another reason to hold the avo, she adds: “You look forward a bit more to things as well.”