Why You REALLY Don't Want to Eat Shrimp

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Sep 24, 2009 at 22:05:57 PM PDT

From the book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe:

...a dry [shrimp] pond should be prepared by spreading urea and superphosphate to encourage plankton growth. Once the pond has been filled with brackish water, generally pumped from a nearby creek, it is typically covered with diesel oil to kill off any insect larvae. The water is then treated with piscicide - a substance that poisons any competing aquatic life- such as chlorine or rotenone; the latter has been strongly linked to Parkinson's disease in humans...

Had enough yet? There's more below...

As the shrimp grow, the water is treated with pesticides and more piscicides, but by far the gravest area of concern is the use of antibiotics to ward off disease. Acutely toxic to other marine organisms, they can cause contact dermatitis in the shrimp farm employees who administer them. When the plug is pulled on the ponds at the end of the growing season, hundreds of pounds of shrimp remain marinating in the toxic mud at the bottom, and pickers have to be hired to scoop up the stranded shrimp.

Farmers... naturally deny they use antibiotics, knowing full well they are banned in important export markets. When the shrimp are tested, however - and the FDA checks less than two percent of seafood imported into the United States - prohibited chemicals are still found. In Louisiana, which does rigorous testing of its own, the antibiotic chloramphenicol, known to cause leukemia and aplastic anemia, was found in nine percent of all samples. In 2007, the European Union rejected shipments of Indian shrimp from six major exporters because they tested positive for chloramphenicol and nitrofurans, another powerful antibiotic and a suspected carcinogen... Food safety experts have discovered that some people who believe they have shellfish allergies are actually exhibiting reactions, like itching and welling, to antibiotic residues in farmed species.

... Researchers at Mississippi Sate bought thirteen brands of imported ready-to-eat [already cooked] shrimp - some packaged with cocktail sauce - and found 162 separate species of bacteria, showing resistance to ten different antibiotics, including chloramphenicol...

The adulteration of shrimp does not end at the pond... shrimp are routinely soaked in a solution of sodium tripolyphosphate, or STPP, a suspected neurotoxicant, still legal in the United States, that prevents seafood from drying out in transit and boosts product weight. Borax, best known as a hand cleaner and insecticide, is used to preseve the color of shrimp in some countries. The most unscrupulous countries use caustic soda to chemically burn tiger shrimp a customer-pleasing pink. - p. 158-160

In case you lost track, here's a list of the nasty stuff that goes into shrimp:

Urea
Superphosphate
Diesel oil
Piscicides (Chlorine, Rotenone)
Pesticides
More Piscicides
Antibiotics (including Chloramphenicol and Nitrofurans)
Antibiotic resistant bacteria
Sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP)
Borax
Caustic soda

Still hungry?

Here are some shrimp facts from the book Bottomfeeder.

• In 2006, Americans ate 1.3 billion lbs of shrimp, or 4.4 lbs per person.
  
• As bad as shrimp farming is, wild-caught shrimp are pretty awful too: for every one pound of shrimp caught by trawler, they kill and throw away 10 pounds of "bycatch" (other species they weren't fishing for).
  
• Chain restaurants favor the uniformity of farmed shrimp over wild-caught shrimp, which can be more varied.
  
• 85% of shrimp sold in the U.S. is imported.
  
• 3/4 of the world's shrimp production comes from developing nations like Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and China.
  
• China's the top producer of shrimp, followed by Thailand.
  
• China supplies 70% of the planet's farmed fish.
  
• In the U.S. one in every five fish is from China.
  
• For each pound of farmed shrimp, it takes two pounds of wild-caught fish flesh. These are ground up and turned into pellets.
  
• Shrimp have been turned into cannibals. A major ingredient in the pellets they eat is ground-up shrimp heads.
  
• Individual shrimp farmers rarely do well financially, facing low prices for shrimp, high feed costs, and high risk of being wiped out by disease.
  
• Shrimp farms do not effectively create jobs. In India an acre of rice paddy can employ 14 people but an acre of shrimp ponds employs 1.
  
• Plants that process farmed shrimp hire many workers to behead and devein shrimp. In India, these workers make (on average) $35/month.
  
• "In Louisiana, which does rigorous testing of its own, the antibiotic chloramphenicol, known to cause leukemia and aplastic anemia, was found in nine percent of all samples." - p. 159
  
• Mangroves, which are being destroyed by shrimp farming, form a natural barrier against hurricanes and tsunamis. They "are among the most productive ecosystems on earth, as well as the most efficient carbon sinks we know of." - p. 160
  
• "38% of mangrove loss worldwide can be attributed to shrimp farming." - p. 160
  
• "In Ecuador, a major supplier of farmed shrimp to American chain restaurants, almost 70 percent of mangroves have been razed since the coming of shrimp farms." - p. 160
  
• In 1990, a flesh-eating virus spread from Mexican shrimp farms to wild blue shrimp, wiping out the blue shrimp in the upper Gulf of California.
  
• "An epidemic of antibiotic-resistant cholera has been documented among Ecuadorean shrimp farm workers." - p. 164