Over at Slog, Brendan has been covering the farmed shrimp slavery scandal. The latest revelation? This statement from British supermarket giant Tesco: “Every retailer that sources farmed prawns from Thailand must now consider it likely that slavery exists in its supply chain.”
But me, I buy shrimp totally guilt free. Because I haven’t purchased farmed shrimp in years. In fact, with few exceptions (for example, locally farmed shellfish), I won’t knowingly eat farm-raised seafood at all.
What I learned from my extensive coverage of the melamine-spiked pet food scandal back in 2007 turned me off of farm-raised seafood for good. As I explained during the midst of the crisis, 81 percent of America’s seafood is imported, and about 40-percent of that is farmed, largely in China, which accounts for about 70-percent of global aquaculture production. And yet, despite the lack of adequate regulatory controls abroad, the US inspects less than 1 percent of imported food.
Environmental and human rights issues aside, much of the world’s farmed seafood is raised in squalid and unsanitary conditions. And there is a long and documented history of adulterated fish feed. I’m just not convinced that it’s safe.
So given the choice, I try to eat only wild seafood, preferably from the reasonably well-regulated (and thus hopefully sustainable) Alaska fishery. That means I don’t eat shrimp nearly as often as I used to back when I purchased the cheap imported farm-raised stuff at the local Asian market. Because I can’t afford to.
But at least when I do purchase shrimp, I don’t have to worry about who I’m hurting, not the least of whom, myself.
Farmed salmon comes out of the water grey, it’s then bleached, (yes withe bleach, just like in your laundry, only more concentrated) then died pink. Tuna farming in Thailand destroyed a local shrimp fishery.
Farmed shrimp from Thailand are a bit more problematic, shrimp are added to rice paddies, the shrimp eat insects reducing the cost to the farmer, the shrimp excrement help fertilize the crops, further reducing cost to the farmer, the fishmeal also fertilizes the crops, when the paddies are drained to harvest the rice the shrimp are collected and sold, increasing the farmers income.
The slavery in the fishmeal industry must stop, but a large boycott of farmed shrimp will force many Thai farmer into poverty, and allow large agribusiness more control over the Thai countryside, not to mention as Thai families are driven into poverty there is a tendency for the sons and daughters (some as young 12) to work in the brothels of Krung Thep (Bangkok to westerners) or Pattaya Beach.
U.S. factory trawlers produce a fair amount of fishmeal, perhaps we could have a program similar to the Food For Peace program where the U.S. Government could buy fishmeal from U.S. producers, and sell it to Thai farmers at favorable rates, thus undercutting the slave ships.
We should also work through the U.N. to punish any manufacturing.
The International Maritime Organization has been very effective in improving conditions on Merchant Ships world wide, so much so that even EU and U.S. Merchant Ships have had to change some practices in the last few years, there is no reason the same cannot be done in the fishing industry.