When I first glanced at the very excellent Seafood Mini-guide of The Blue Ocean Institute, their recommendations on various types of seafood all seemed fairly predictable until I got to the bottom of the list and did a double take. They have shrimp in their worst category. What's up with that? Well, I think for starters the Earth Island Institute can begin to tell you what's up with shrimp with their Mangrove Action Project. According to them (and many other highly knowledgeable sources) shrimp is the poster child for unsustainability. Wild caught shrimp bring with them a large amount of bycatch. And as this article tells, shrimp aquaculture is reeking havoc on the coastal regions of many developing nations -- especially in the clearing of mangroves for shrimp ponds. But is it realistic to hope Americans can stop eating shrimp when Red Lobster is currently touting their "Endless Shrimp Buffett"?
Posted by Randy Olson at March 3, 2004 07:08 PMIn addition to the issues of sustainability that surround shrimp, whether trawled or farmed, their production can have serious social impacts on coastal communities in Asia, Latin America and Africa. People have been murdered in at least 11 countries in conflict directly related to shrimp farming, which has an annual retail value of $50-60 billion. As the cost of this former luxury falls, the real price continues to be paid by people and the environment many, many miles from those consuming the shrimp.
In 2003, the Environmental Justice Foundation published a number of detailed full colour reports on the social and environmental impacts that Western demand for shrimp is having in some of the world's poorest countries. These can be downloaded from our website and include:
Squandering the Seas: How Shrimp Trawling is Threatening Ecological Integrity and Food Security Around the World. 2003.
Smash & Grab: Conflict, Corruption and Human Rights Abuses in the Shrimp Farming Industry. 2003.
EJF Consumer Guide to Prawns
See http://www.ejfoundation.org/shrimp/ for our shrimp subsite and http://www.ejfoundation.org/reports/
These will be accompanied by further reports in 2004.
Posted by: Dr Mike Shanahan at March 5, 2004 07:00 AMHey Randy,
There was an article in the NYTimes the other day about how the US shrimp trawling industry in the Gulf area was trying to get trade tariffs placed on farmed Brazilian shrimp because the Brazilian shrimp are undercutting (blah, blah, blah) the domestic shrimp market. Anyhow, it was in the business section and made no mention of the fact that BOTH industries were contributing to the unsustainability factor. What would be nice would be for the domestic trawlers to go the trapping way, and then they could market their shrimp as "sustainably harvested" and then have the "environmental leverage" according to NAFTA or Congress or whatever to have the tariffs on foreign farmed shrimp.
I also wonder about the effects of "larval bycatch" in those areas where they harvest shirmp larvae to stock the farms instead of growing them throughout the entire lifecycle.
Hi, just wanted to say great blog.
Posted by: Jamie at April 7, 2004 04:02 PM