The Unpalatable Prawn

by Isabel de la Torre, ISA-Net

US consumers ate about one billion pounds of shrimp in 1998 - 695,000 pounds of it imported. Over the past 15 years, imports of farmed shrimp have increased phenomenally. It is now a $3 billion-a-year industry. US consumption drives a massive worldwide trade in shrimp. The unregulated global shrimp-farming industry is environmenttally destructive and economically unsustainable.

Most shrimp served in restaurants and sold in grocery stores were raised in oceanside shrimp farms in more than 50 Asian and Latin American countries - including Thailand, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico. In a relatively short time, this young industry has wrought havoc in these countries. Now it is looking to expand operations to Africa.

Advocates paint shrimp aquaculture as the solution to global food insecurity, poverty and unemployment. In practice, however, shrimp remains a luxury item. Rather than serving as a local protein source for hungry people, shrimp is exported to far-off restaurants in rich countries. Shrimp farming makes a few investors very rich, but it displaces and impoverishes thousands of local people.

Shrimp Farms vs. Mangroves
Nearly one-quarter of the world's remaining tropical mangrove forests have been lost in the past 20 years. Clearing mangroves to build shrimp farming has been a major cause. Mangroves protect coral reefs and provide nurseries for 85 percent of the tropic's commercial fish species. Because Mangrove forests serve as storm surge protection, their loss has been implicated in the deaths of some 10,000 people in a recent cyclone. Shrimp farming destroys habitat, silts coral reefs, and depletes coastal marine fisheries. Reduction of fish populations endangers the traditional livelihood of native fishers. Sometimes it endangers their very lives.

On June 11, 1999, five Indian villagers were killed and 24 others injured for protesting the non-implementation of a Supreme Court's ban on shrimp farms within 1,000 meters of Orissa's Chilika Lake - India's largest brackish water lagoon. More than 100 Bangladeshi villagers were killed in conflicts over land acquisition efforts by shrimp investors in 1997.

The control of land and water resources lies at the root of shrimp-farming conflicts. While outside money pours in to expand shrimp operations, local needs remain unmet. As one Filipino fisher lamented, "The shrimp live better than we do. They have electricity, we don't. The shrimp have clean water, we don't. The shrimp have lots of food, but we are hungry."

Fresh groundwater is critical for people living in coastal areas but shrimp farms can pump water from the ground faster than it can be re-plenished. In some coastal regions, this can cause seawater to seep into local aquifers, making the water unfit for drinking and irrigation. Shrimp aquaculture has caused salt-water intrusion in villages in India, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Ecuador and the Philippines.

Mangroves link tropical forests and coral reefs, providing a critical transition between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. They protect shorelines from erosion, capture sediments (thereby protecting coral reefs), protect coastal rainforests from tropical storms, are critical to local biodiversity, and have increasingly been used for recreation and eco-tourism.

The destruction of mangroves is made worse by other environmental impacts, such as introduction of pathogens and parasites. Shrimp aquaculture can result in the loss of genetic diversity and weakening of native shrimp species.

Shrimp farms are stocked with ocean-caught juvenile shrimp. But the fine-meshed nets used to capture these shrimp also remove other animals from the sea. By some estimates, this bycatch claims 100 other sea creatures for every shrimp. Shrimp farms may be even more destructive than shrimp trawling - an industry notorious for its enormous take of bycatch.

Antibiotics, fungicides, parasiticides, algicides and pesticides are used to control diseases inside the crowded shrimp ponds. But treating bacterial infections with heavy doses of antibiotics may leave residual antibiotics in marketed shrimp, increasing antibiotic resistance among human consumers.

Grassroots movements have emerged in North America, Europe and Japan to address the impacts of shrimp aquaculture.

The Industrial Shrimp Action Network (ISA Net) - a global coalition of environmental organizations - was founded on World Food Day, October 16, 1997. ISA's strategy is two-fold: (1) to support coastal communities in their efforts to maintain control of the use and management of their resources and (2) to educate consumers about the social, economic, and environmental costs of shrimp production so they can make informed decisions about purchasing and eating shrimp.

When the World Shrimp Market '99 opened in Madrid last year, Greenpeace joined several Latin NGOs to hang three large banners from the conference site, the Sol Meli Hotel. The anti-shrimp-farm banners were unfurled at the precise moment the Spanish Vice-Minister of Fisheries and other industry representatives were preparing to enter the hotel. During the meeting, the Fisheries Secretariat specifically addressed the industry's problems - pollution, by-catch and mangrove destruction.

Last October 13, ISA Net and the Asia-Pacific Environmental Exchange (APEX) held a press conference in Seattle in advance of the World Trade Organization's "Millennial Round."

In a joint report, "Prawn to Trade, Prawn to Consume," the two groups criticized the WTO's policies. "We don't need free trade. What we need is sustainable trade. WTO rules would support destructive shrimp farming," the report stated. The NGOs called for labeling shrimp products to inform shoppers how the prawns are caught and produced. Such eco-labels are opposed by the WTO as a "barrier to free trade."

Father Thomas Kocherry, coordinator of the World Forum of Fish-harvesters and Fishworkers, proposed that "Rather than mindlessly promoting free trade, the WTO should promote sustainability, environmental enhancement, social benefits and economic efficiency."

ISA Net's member organizations have called for US shoppers to reduce their consumption of farmed shrimp. Instead, ISA Net recommends that consumers in the Pacific Northwest support the US-based spot prawn industry - a more ecologically sound form of shrimp farming.

This article is adapted from "Prawn to Trade, Prawn to Consume" by Isabel de la Torre and Dave Batker. For the complete report or more information, contact: ISA Net, 25415 70th Ave. East, Graham, WA 98338, www.shrimpaction.org, <isatorre@seanet.com>.