Shrimp Again?
A year has passed since I last wrote about shrimp and shrimp farms and yes, a few things have changed but many more things have not. Our worldwide demand for shrimp continues at a record pace meaning that shrimp farms are having a tough time meeting our growing population's hunger for it and if you're a struggling shrimp farmer, how do you take the time and effort to clean out those ponds (the shrimp, after all, are bottom feeders so those of you with fish tanks at home will realize the amount of gunk that can accumulate on the bottom in just one month). So, without meaning to ruin your appetite for shrimp, here are a few quick developments to put the decision back into your hands (full disclosure, I haven't eaten shrimp in over 20 years so my view is tainted to be sure).
Ah, those tasty tiger and jumbo shrimp you see splattering across the pan and tossed with panko bread crumbs, and on special all month long for only $9.99. How can you resist? Shrimp production is again expected to increase in 2017, that trend adding to the recovery following the drop in shrimp production some five years ago due to disease-outbreaks. Wait, what disease? As it turns out, farm-raising shrimp is not that easy. Get them too crowded, don't circulate the water, feed in contaminated water, or run out of antibiotics to toss in and your entire pond and production can suffer. For many of the smaller farmers --especially those in the larger producing countries such as China and Ecuador-- this can mean a good portion (or all) of your annual income. Here's what Wikipedia had to add on some of the diseases affecting shrimp farmers (which I've shortened to give you a quick idea): Yellowhead disease...The disease is highly contagious and leads to mass mortality within 2 to 4 days. The cephalothorax of an infected shrimp turns yellow after a period of unusually high feeding activity ending abruptly, and the then moribund shrimp congregate near the surface of their pond before dying...Early Mortality Syndrome disease has been linked to a strain of a bacterium called Vibrio parahaemolyticus which affects the Giant Tiger Prawn and the Whiteleg Shrimp, both shrimp that are commonly farmed around the world. The strains are not harmful to humans, but are economically devastating for shrimp farmers...Whitespot syndrome is a disease caused by a family of related viruses. It has a wide host range and is highly lethal, leading to mortality rates of 100% within days...Taura syndrome was first reported from shrimp farms on the Taura river in Ecuador in 1992. The host of the virus causing the disease is P. vannamei, one of the two most commonly farmed shrimp. The disease spread rapidly...Infectious hypodermal and hematopoietic necrosis (IHHN) is a disease that causes mass mortality among P. stylirostris (as high as 90%) and severe deformations in L. vannamei...There are also a number of bacterial infections that are lethal to shrimp. Ah but at least all that happened back in 2007-08 and is past...or is it? According to the recent Global Aquaculture Advocate, worrying about disease didn't even make the top three concerns among shrimp farmers back in 2007. This year, disease has become the number one concern.
Well at least those dang shrimp you're eating --those ones from Indonesia and Mexico and Thailand and elsewhere-- are all inspected and disease-free, aren't they? Truth is, probably not. The FDA Food and Drug Administration) inspects only a little over 1% (that's ONE percent) of all imported shrimp, something that the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to help increase (as they are scheduled to do with inspecting catfish and catfish farms later this year). So far, the answer has been no and both departments are bracing for additional budget cuts as a new administration is inaugurated in the U.S. which will possibly mean even fewer inspections. As to those processed shrimp arriving in boxes and frozen and often served in restaurants...generally there are no (as in zero) inspections, at least not for the importers delivering them. Here's a quick take from the FDA rulebook: Question: Will importers be required to test entries against their product specifications? Answer: No, Part 123.12(a)(2)(i) does not require that importers test product to see if their product safety specifications are met. Question: Is it necessary for importers to insist that their product specifications be signed by the foreign processor or that the foreign processors write a letter guaranteeing adherence to the specifications? Answer: No, it is not necessary. However, the importer may wish to have the foreign processors indicate in some manner an intent to meet the specifications. Question: Do product specifications need to address non-safety issues such as filth and decomposition? Answer: No, the product specification requirement is for safety only. Specifications such as water activity, pH, histamine content and pathogen limits, are examples of specifications that importers might set in their efforts to ensure product safety. It is important to note than an importer's specifications are not necessarily the same as a processor's HACCP critical limits. For example, an importer may include a specification that salmonella not be detectable in the product, even though the seafood will be cooked by the consumer. This standard is consistent with FDA's policy that seafood is adulterated if it contains this pathogen. However, the presence of salmonella would not be expected to be a critial limit in a HACCP plan for the same product.
Not sounding too good? One more, this one from Bloomberg Businessweek on how the smaller aquaculture farms work in many parts of China: At another farm, in Jiangmen, a farmer scatters a scoop of grain to rouse her slumbering swine, penned on the edge of a pond with 20,000 Mandarin fish. The feed contains three kinds of antibiotics, including colistin, which in humans is considered an antibiotic of last resort. Colistin is banned for swine use in the U.S., but until November, when the Chinese government finally clamped down, it was used extensively in animal feed in China. Vials and containers for nine other antibiotics lie around the 20-sow piggery—on shelves, in shopping bags, and atop trash piles. Seven of those drugs have been deemed critically important for human medicine by the World Health Organization...Research has found that as much as 90 percent of the antibiotics administered to pigs pass undegraded through their urine and feces. This has a direct impact on farmed seafood. The waste from the pigpens at the Jiangmen farm flowing into the ponds, for example, exposes the fish to almost the same doses of medicine the livestock get—and that’s in addition to the antibiotics added to the water to prevent and treat aquatic disease outbreaks. Wait, what waste from pig farms? As is practiced, even in the most advanced shrimp farms, fertilizers and minerals and antibiotics are fed or flushed into shrimp ponds (Wikipedia wrote that up to 70% of such feed remains uneaten and simply rots at the bottom, a problem when pond waters are not extensively circulated or aerated)...for many of the smaller farmers, this simply means letting the pig poop and other waste flow directly into the shrimp ponds (same elements and less costly). Then the shrimp ponds are dosed with additional antibiotics. The article mentions that the accumulated waste doesn't stop there but rather flows further downstream or out into the ocean for others (including us) to absorb.
The gist of the article however wasn't the feeding practice of such smaller shrimp farms but rather the maze of shipping and labeling methods used by importers to avoid detection of what might be their contaminated product. The $90 billion aquaculture trade accounts for almost half of all seafood harvested or caught, according to the United Nations. China supplies almost 60 percent of the global total and is the biggest exporter. U.S. food regulators have known about the country’s antibiotic problem for more than a decade. The Food and Drug Administration intensified its monitoring of imported farm-raised seafood from China in the fall of 2006 and found a quarter of the samples tested contained residues of unapproved drugs and unsafe food additives...But antibiotic-contaminated seafood keeps turning up at U.S. ports, as well as in restaurants and grocery stores. It's a process termed "transhipping" where a product's country of origin is quickly re-labeled as coming from another country. Once caught, a company will generally pay the fine, disappear, and re-appear as another newly-formed company. So while the FDA is watching shipments from China (still facing heavy tariffs and inspections on their shrimp shipments), shrimp products from Malaysia and Indonesia and elsewhere might actually be passing through having been transhipped from China. Adds the article: It appears now that dirty shrimp is being routed through different countries. One that might be taking Malaysia’s place as an international transshipping hub is Ecuador, domestic shrimp producers say...“The import alert was a huge step forward to prevent contaminated shrimp from getting to U.S. consumers, but we have also seen significant shifts in trade patterns indicating new routes and methods for getting bad shrimp into the U.S. market,” says Williams, of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “As long as there are distributors, retailers, and restaurants that, provided that the price is low, do not know and do not care where their shrimp is coming from, we expect to see shrimp-trade fraud.”
Shrimp is now considered the most popular seafood choice in the U.S. and China is still considered the top exporter of shrimp to the U.S. But one might ask if tilapia consumption is catching up, especially those farm-raised tilapia coming from Ecuador and China (and now available in a majority of grocery stores and large warehouse stores such as Costco and Sam's; and despite Congressional opposition, all seafood displayed in the U.S. is now required to show the country of origin on its label). Turns out that tilapia are often raised in shrimp farms, the fish being the top feeders and the shrimp being the bottom feeders, a nice symbiotic relationship that likely adds a bit more fish poop to the shrimp diet. If this all sounds a bit less-appetizing, you might want to watch the video in the Bloomberg article subtitled "Why You Might Want to Pass on the Shrimp Cocktail."
Okay sorry. Many of you absolutely love shrimp, and certainly there are many shrimp farms doing an excellent job of farm-raising and processing shrimp. And if you're a poor farmer who can barely afford the broodstock necessary to stock your pond, each added cost might mean the difference between feeding your family or not feeding your family. But did I mention the ongoing destruction of mangrove forests used to build more shrimp farms (mangroves are a necessary filter blocking the arrival of sea water into fresh water supplies) or that many female shrimp have their eyes plucked out in shrimp farms to encourage breeding and egg production (in the wild, female shrimp are rather solitary and will hide in crevices when crowded). Okay, sorry again. It's not a pleasant business by any means, but as with all such issues, the laws of supply and demand are just that. The demand is there so the supply chains will do whatever is necessary to meet that demand. Which falls right back onto your shrimp platter...antibiotics, diseases, inspections, transhipping, it's all dependent on what each of us does or doesn't demand. Certainly we can't question all of what we eat...but in the case of shrimp, we might want to be asking a few more questions.
Ah, those tasty tiger and jumbo shrimp you see splattering across the pan and tossed with panko bread crumbs, and on special all month long for only $9.99. How can you resist? Shrimp production is again expected to increase in 2017, that trend adding to the recovery following the drop in shrimp production some five years ago due to disease-outbreaks. Wait, what disease? As it turns out, farm-raising shrimp is not that easy. Get them too crowded, don't circulate the water, feed in contaminated water, or run out of antibiotics to toss in and your entire pond and production can suffer. For many of the smaller farmers --especially those in the larger producing countries such as China and Ecuador-- this can mean a good portion (or all) of your annual income. Here's what Wikipedia had to add on some of the diseases affecting shrimp farmers (which I've shortened to give you a quick idea): Yellowhead disease...The disease is highly contagious and leads to mass mortality within 2 to 4 days. The cephalothorax of an infected shrimp turns yellow after a period of unusually high feeding activity ending abruptly, and the then moribund shrimp congregate near the surface of their pond before dying...Early Mortality Syndrome disease has been linked to a strain of a bacterium called Vibrio parahaemolyticus which affects the Giant Tiger Prawn and the Whiteleg Shrimp, both shrimp that are commonly farmed around the world. The strains are not harmful to humans, but are economically devastating for shrimp farmers...Whitespot syndrome is a disease caused by a family of related viruses. It has a wide host range and is highly lethal, leading to mortality rates of 100% within days...Taura syndrome was first reported from shrimp farms on the Taura river in Ecuador in 1992. The host of the virus causing the disease is P. vannamei, one of the two most commonly farmed shrimp. The disease spread rapidly...Infectious hypodermal and hematopoietic necrosis (IHHN) is a disease that causes mass mortality among P. stylirostris (as high as 90%) and severe deformations in L. vannamei...There are also a number of bacterial infections that are lethal to shrimp. Ah but at least all that happened back in 2007-08 and is past...or is it? According to the recent Global Aquaculture Advocate, worrying about disease didn't even make the top three concerns among shrimp farmers back in 2007. This year, disease has become the number one concern.
Well at least those dang shrimp you're eating --those ones from Indonesia and Mexico and Thailand and elsewhere-- are all inspected and disease-free, aren't they? Truth is, probably not. The FDA Food and Drug Administration) inspects only a little over 1% (that's ONE percent) of all imported shrimp, something that the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to help increase (as they are scheduled to do with inspecting catfish and catfish farms later this year). So far, the answer has been no and both departments are bracing for additional budget cuts as a new administration is inaugurated in the U.S. which will possibly mean even fewer inspections. As to those processed shrimp arriving in boxes and frozen and often served in restaurants...generally there are no (as in zero) inspections, at least not for the importers delivering them. Here's a quick take from the FDA rulebook: Question: Will importers be required to test entries against their product specifications? Answer: No, Part 123.12(a)(2)(i) does not require that importers test product to see if their product safety specifications are met. Question: Is it necessary for importers to insist that their product specifications be signed by the foreign processor or that the foreign processors write a letter guaranteeing adherence to the specifications? Answer: No, it is not necessary. However, the importer may wish to have the foreign processors indicate in some manner an intent to meet the specifications. Question: Do product specifications need to address non-safety issues such as filth and decomposition? Answer: No, the product specification requirement is for safety only. Specifications such as water activity, pH, histamine content and pathogen limits, are examples of specifications that importers might set in their efforts to ensure product safety. It is important to note than an importer's specifications are not necessarily the same as a processor's HACCP critical limits. For example, an importer may include a specification that salmonella not be detectable in the product, even though the seafood will be cooked by the consumer. This standard is consistent with FDA's policy that seafood is adulterated if it contains this pathogen. However, the presence of salmonella would not be expected to be a critial limit in a HACCP plan for the same product.
Not sounding too good? One more, this one from Bloomberg Businessweek on how the smaller aquaculture farms work in many parts of China: At another farm, in Jiangmen, a farmer scatters a scoop of grain to rouse her slumbering swine, penned on the edge of a pond with 20,000 Mandarin fish. The feed contains three kinds of antibiotics, including colistin, which in humans is considered an antibiotic of last resort. Colistin is banned for swine use in the U.S., but until November, when the Chinese government finally clamped down, it was used extensively in animal feed in China. Vials and containers for nine other antibiotics lie around the 20-sow piggery—on shelves, in shopping bags, and atop trash piles. Seven of those drugs have been deemed critically important for human medicine by the World Health Organization...Research has found that as much as 90 percent of the antibiotics administered to pigs pass undegraded through their urine and feces. This has a direct impact on farmed seafood. The waste from the pigpens at the Jiangmen farm flowing into the ponds, for example, exposes the fish to almost the same doses of medicine the livestock get—and that’s in addition to the antibiotics added to the water to prevent and treat aquatic disease outbreaks. Wait, what waste from pig farms? As is practiced, even in the most advanced shrimp farms, fertilizers and minerals and antibiotics are fed or flushed into shrimp ponds (Wikipedia wrote that up to 70% of such feed remains uneaten and simply rots at the bottom, a problem when pond waters are not extensively circulated or aerated)...for many of the smaller farmers, this simply means letting the pig poop and other waste flow directly into the shrimp ponds (same elements and less costly). Then the shrimp ponds are dosed with additional antibiotics. The article mentions that the accumulated waste doesn't stop there but rather flows further downstream or out into the ocean for others (including us) to absorb.
The gist of the article however wasn't the feeding practice of such smaller shrimp farms but rather the maze of shipping and labeling methods used by importers to avoid detection of what might be their contaminated product. The $90 billion aquaculture trade accounts for almost half of all seafood harvested or caught, according to the United Nations. China supplies almost 60 percent of the global total and is the biggest exporter. U.S. food regulators have known about the country’s antibiotic problem for more than a decade. The Food and Drug Administration intensified its monitoring of imported farm-raised seafood from China in the fall of 2006 and found a quarter of the samples tested contained residues of unapproved drugs and unsafe food additives...But antibiotic-contaminated seafood keeps turning up at U.S. ports, as well as in restaurants and grocery stores. It's a process termed "transhipping" where a product's country of origin is quickly re-labeled as coming from another country. Once caught, a company will generally pay the fine, disappear, and re-appear as another newly-formed company. So while the FDA is watching shipments from China (still facing heavy tariffs and inspections on their shrimp shipments), shrimp products from Malaysia and Indonesia and elsewhere might actually be passing through having been transhipped from China. Adds the article: It appears now that dirty shrimp is being routed through different countries. One that might be taking Malaysia’s place as an international transshipping hub is Ecuador, domestic shrimp producers say...“The import alert was a huge step forward to prevent contaminated shrimp from getting to U.S. consumers, but we have also seen significant shifts in trade patterns indicating new routes and methods for getting bad shrimp into the U.S. market,” says Williams, of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “As long as there are distributors, retailers, and restaurants that, provided that the price is low, do not know and do not care where their shrimp is coming from, we expect to see shrimp-trade fraud.”
Shrimp is now considered the most popular seafood choice in the U.S. and China is still considered the top exporter of shrimp to the U.S. But one might ask if tilapia consumption is catching up, especially those farm-raised tilapia coming from Ecuador and China (and now available in a majority of grocery stores and large warehouse stores such as Costco and Sam's; and despite Congressional opposition, all seafood displayed in the U.S. is now required to show the country of origin on its label). Turns out that tilapia are often raised in shrimp farms, the fish being the top feeders and the shrimp being the bottom feeders, a nice symbiotic relationship that likely adds a bit more fish poop to the shrimp diet. If this all sounds a bit less-appetizing, you might want to watch the video in the Bloomberg article subtitled "Why You Might Want to Pass on the Shrimp Cocktail."
Okay sorry. Many of you absolutely love shrimp, and certainly there are many shrimp farms doing an excellent job of farm-raising and processing shrimp. And if you're a poor farmer who can barely afford the broodstock necessary to stock your pond, each added cost might mean the difference between feeding your family or not feeding your family. But did I mention the ongoing destruction of mangrove forests used to build more shrimp farms (mangroves are a necessary filter blocking the arrival of sea water into fresh water supplies) or that many female shrimp have their eyes plucked out in shrimp farms to encourage breeding and egg production (in the wild, female shrimp are rather solitary and will hide in crevices when crowded). Okay, sorry again. It's not a pleasant business by any means, but as with all such issues, the laws of supply and demand are just that. The demand is there so the supply chains will do whatever is necessary to meet that demand. Which falls right back onto your shrimp platter...antibiotics, diseases, inspections, transhipping, it's all dependent on what each of us does or doesn't demand. Certainly we can't question all of what we eat...but in the case of shrimp, we might want to be asking a few more questions.
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