Workers at the Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company will receive batches of two million oyster seeds this year as they begin their annual seeding.

The baby oysters, which are imported from France, are now being put in meshed bags and placed on trestles off the Whitstable coast.

Over the next three years, the oysters will be brought ashore six times to be regraded and placed in larger mesh bags, until they reach market size - when there will only be 150 to 200 oysters in each bag.

On Friday, up to 5,000 oyster seeds were put in the bags ready to begin their growth.

A company spokesman said: “The oysters, which are around 6mm in diameter, are produced by a specialised oyster hatchery in France which guarantees that they are free from diseases or pathogens, meaning they will not bring any harm to the growing area.

“We farm the non-indigenous species Crassostrea gigas, as the Native oyster has not yet been successfully grown on a commercial scale using aquaculture.

“Oyster aquaculture is one of the most sustainable forms of producing protein in the world as they feed on naturally occurring food in the water and need no artificial feeding or treatment during their growth cycle and improve the water quality in the area.”

The oysters contain marine based omega-3 fatty acids.

The fishery has come under fire for the “dangerous” oyster racks on West Beach and is currently under investigation by the Marine and Maritime Organisation.

However, the fishery spokesman has highlighted that “there are implications for the future for the whole oyster farming industry in the UK from this case.”

The spokesman added: “Growing oysters on trestles is the only way to grow oysters of a consistent quality and quantity, something that is vitally important to develop the oyster market in the UK.

“In France, this type of production method has been used to develop an oyster industry that is more than 100 times the size of the UK market.

“If the oyster industry in the UK is to develop and compete with overseas, then we need to adopt new technologies to facilitate increased production to fulfil an increasing domestic demand, otherwise we will be reliant on imported oysters.”