The Dark Side of the Rare Shrimp Trade
About 25 years ago, few Americans ate shrimp. But that changed when seafood distributors marketed frozen crustaceans nationwide. Grocery stores and restaurants began stocking the popular food, and some distributors began offering Crystal Red Shrimp (S-SS Grade).
But the AP’s investigation has linked shrimp to abusive factories that rely on modern-day slavery to operate. Here’s what you need to know about this favorite ocean seafood.
Human Rights Violations
For years, US regulators have allowed Thai companies with lousy labor records to supply tainted shrimp to American restaurants, universities and military chow halls. The government hasn’t slapped Thailand with sanctions applied to other countries with weak human trafficking records because the country is a strategic south-east Asian ally. But it’s not the only country exporting slave-tainted seafood to America.
Last week, the harsh spotlight turned to India, which supplies the US with more than a third of its shrimp. A whistleblower named Joshua Farinella leaked thousands of pages of internal documents, invoices, emails, recorded zoom calls, security footage and whats app exchanges linked to a company where he worked as a manager. It’s a case that could have major implications for the domestic US market, which imports around 90 percent of its shrimp.
A video published by AP shows Indian workers in a cramped, filthy warehouse peeling shrimp that will eventually reach American consumers. The video’s soundtrack features moans of pain and screams of fear. Inside the factory, toilets overflow with faeces and stench. The AP’s video interviews with workers reveal that the company’s conditions are common, even though India has expansive laws against forced labor. Many of the women interviewed said that, despite working in oppressive conditions, they feel they have no choice but to keep the jobs because they need the money. The AP also found evidence of debt bondage, in which workers are tied to a company by a recruitment fee and kept indentured until their debt is paid.
CAL argues that the problem of slavery in the shrimp trade can be solved by eliminating middlemen, requiring independent auditors to inspect processing plants and forcing retailers and restaurant chains to source only from suppliers who have transparent records on worker conditions. Its report suggests that the best way to do that is for the industry’s biggest buyers—including Whole Foods, Walmart and Costco, as well as chains like Olive Garden and Red Lobster—to overhaul their procurement practices by ensuring that producers hire workers as employees and provide basic documentation such as contracts and pay stubs.
Ecological Devastation
Despite its remarkable worldwide growth, the shrimp industry suffers from a hidden cost. As they convert coastal wetlands into shrimp ponds, farmers disturb ecological balance by pumping in fresh water and releasing waste. Pond conditions often degrade and disease outbreaks wreak havoc. Viruses that slip into ponds from wild stocks or from birds eating infected shrimp and then defecating on farms spread rapidly. As a result, almost every country that has developed a major shrimp farming industry has experienced high-output booms followed by devastating epidemics.
To protect themselves against such disease outbreaks, the shrimp farming industry has turned to a variety of toxic chemicals. They use a cocktail of antibiotics (some of which are banned in the United States but widely used abroad), piscicides (fish-killing chemicals such as chlorine and sodium tripolyphosphate), and pesticides, which pollute waters with their residues. These chemicals contaminate the natural environment and human bodies, and they also harm other animals in the ecosystem.
Farmed shrimp also require a substantial amount of wild fish to feed. This depletes the fish populations that indigenous communities depend on for food, income, and jobs. In addition, the expansion of shrimp farms devastates mangrove forests, which are essential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting coastlines from storm damage.
As a result, the shrimp industry contributes to global environmental disasters and is at odds with the goal of sustainable seafood. Consumers can help by avoiding imported farmed and wild shrimp and supporting domestic Northwest wild or U.S. farmed shrimp instead.
During its investigation, the AP visited supermarkets chosen at random in all 50 states and found the following brands selling shrimp linked to tainted supply chains: Cape Gourmet; Certifresh; Chef’s Net; Chico; CoCo; Darden (Olive Garden Italian Kitchen, Longhorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze Island Grille, Capital Grille, Eddie V’s Prime Seafood and Yard House); Harbor Banks; KPF; Kmart; Market Basket; Master Catch; Neptune; Ocean Gourmet; Publix; Red Lobster; Shellfish Corporation; Sea Best; Fancy Feast cat food; Stater Bros.; and Winn-Dixie. In some cases, the exact brand of shrimp was not listed on store shelves but on menus or corporate websites.
Drug Residues
Antibiotics are essential tools for saving the lives of sick and injured shrimp, but when they are misused by shrimp farmers, it can lead to resistant strains that allow bacteria to quickly multiply. This, in turn, can result in antibiotic residues being found in seafood. These residues can cause adverse health reactions in humans, and are even potentially carcinogenic.
Resistant strains of antibiotics are created by bacterial cells fusing with each other in tiny circular loops called plasmids. This happens when antibiotics are used improperly, such as administering higher doses than needed or allowing the drug to be used before symptoms appear. This is why it is so important for doctors to only prescribe antibiotics after a thorough and science-based determination of the underlying problem.
When the EPA finds antibiotic residues in imported seafood, it can require the exporting country to implement measures that prevent this from occurring in the future. This includes requiring that antibiotics be administered at the correct time and not before a fish is healthy, and setting limits on the amount of antibiotics that can be in the water or feed. Unfortunately, these requirements are rarely enforced by the FDA, and only a small percentage of all seafood imports are tested for antibiotic residue.
The Outlaw Ocean Project has uncovered documented evidence that one of the largest shrimp exporters in the world knows that their products contain banned antibiotics and antifungals and intentionally decides to ship them anyway. This was revealed by documents obtained from a whistleblower, including e-mail communications that document abhorrent conditions in company-owned dormitories where workers were peeled shrimp. The e-mails detail grotesque abuse, including unrelenting work without breaks and forced sexual behavior in an effort to produce maximum output.
In a recent study, shrimp samples purchased at retail stores in Baton Rouge, LA were tested for the presence of antibiotic and other drug residues using ELISA test kits (Oxytetracycline, Nitrofurantoin, Chloramphenicol, Malachite Green and Fluoroquinolone). All shrimp samples were also screened with an Alert sulfite detection kit to see if they exceeded the legal limit of 100 ppm of sulfite residue.
Viruses
Many of the virulent pathogens that plague shrimp farms have been introduced by global trade patterns. As overseas farmers turned coastlines into ponds, crowded shrimp were exposed to stresses and latent viruses in the wild that might not otherwise affect them. Once a virus infects a shrimp farm, it rapidly spreads as it moves from pond to pond via untreated and contaminated water, or by birds that consume ill shrimp and then defecate on healthy ones in another pond miles away.
Disease outbreaks can have a devastating effect on both the industry and local communities. They reduce export revenue, which can lead to a collapse of the local economy, and they disrupt the supply of raw materials needed by a growing shrimp farm. They can also destroy a pond’s stock of mature shrimp, which is the most valuable product.
Several of the diseases that have devastated shrimp farms are caused by viruses, including white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHHNV) and yellow head virus (YHV). WSSV was first detected in commercial farms of the farmed species P. vannamei in Taiwan in 1987/1988 and wiped out more than half of the shrimp harvest that year. The emergence of IHHNV and YHV in farmed shrimp in Asia has been even more devastating, reducing production by a combined total of $US1.5-3.0 billion between their first appearances in the industry and 2001 (Lightner 1996a).
The emergence of these virulent viruses is a logical consequence of the massive ecological shifts and changes in trade patterns that have accompanied the rise of the global shrimp farming industry. While specialized seed (broodstock) that is free of all major pathogens has helped to improve the overall health and sustainability of shrimp farms, the influx of non-SPF P. vannamei from the western hemisphere has introduced new viruses that have rapidly accelerated their geographic and agricultural spread, particularly in Asia (Chang et al. 2004).
After examining the raw shrimp at the Gig shed, the AP tracked it to U.S. grocery stores, retailers and restaurants, including Safeway, Piggly Wiggly, Albertsons and Kroger, that buy it from Thai companies, using customs records and Thai industry reports. The AP also traced the origins of shrimp imported from Thai companies into European and Asian markets.
