Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare

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Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare

 

The environmental impact of shrimp can be horrific. But most Americans don't know where their shrimp comes from or what's in it.

 

by Jill Richardson

 

Americans love their shrimp. It's the most popular seafood in the country, but unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a cocktail of chemicals, harvested at the expense of one of the world's productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines for finding some kind of "sustainable shrimp" are so far nonexistent.

 

In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda…….

 

More at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/04