Sunday, August 19, 2007

Cleaner shrimp farms thanks to Wal-mart

Pressure from Wal-mart is leading to cleaner shrimp farming in Thailand. To keep selling shrimp to Wal-mart, shrimp farmers are actually reducing the harm caused by their farms.

I like the approach. It's more valuable to fix bad farms than drop bad shirmp and switch to better sources. Wal-mart's commitment to sustainable seafood includes a pledge that they'll work with suppliers to reduce impacts and here's some evidence that it's working.

Not everyone is happy. Some shrimp farmers say that the process favors big operations with lots of capital, and environmentalists believe that the new cleaner farms still have environmental impacts. Some people support wild-caught shrimp, claiming that it's better than farming, but shrimp trawling is not exactly an ocean-friendly activity.

Yeah, I wish there was more progress too. But here's an important question..who is doing more than Wal-mart to clean up shrimp farms on such a large scale?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When your headline first came up in my reader, I pictured herds of grateful Lysmata wurdemanni.

Mark Powell said...

Shrimp that clean parasites off other animals might be able to adapt to cleaning up their own ponds!? Maybe someone should try it.

OCEANREVOLUTION.org said...

Hey, ya'll. before you feel good about buying "clean" shrimp from WalMart, read the rest of the book.