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Shrimp’s Carbon Footprint Is 10 Times Greater Than Beef’s

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rangerrebew:
 
FEBRUARY 22, 2012
Shrimp’s Carbon Footprint Is 10 Times Greater Than Beef’s
Tom Philpott
 

“Shrimp lovers don’t need to crash a fancy party to enjoy premium, seasoned-to-perfection shrimp,” announced a Taco Bell press release last year. The chain was heralding its “Pacific Shrimp Taco,” which featured a half-dozen “premium shrimp” for just $2.79.

Marketing campaigns like Taco Bell’s, along with Red Lobster’s periodic “Endless Shrimp” promotions, crystallize shrimp’s transformation from special-treat food to everyday cheap fare. What happened? The answer lies in the rise of factory-scale shrimp farms over the last generation. Twenty years ago, 80 percent of shrimp consumed here came from domestic wild fisheries, with imports supplying the rest. Today, we’ve more than flipped those numbers: the United States imports 90 percent of the shrimp consumed here. We now bring in a staggering 1.2 billion pounds of it annually, mainly from farms in Asia. Between 1995 and 2008, the inflation-adjusted price of wild-caught Gulf shrimp plunged 30 percent.

It turns out, not surprisingly, that plates mounded with cheap shrimp float on a veritable sea of ecological and social trouble. In his excellent 2008 book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, the Canadian journalist Taras Grescoe took a hard look at the Asian operations that supply our shrimp. His conclusion: “The simple fact is, if you’re eating cheap shrimp today, it almost certainly comes from a turbid, pesticide- and antibiotic-filled, virus-laden pond in the tropical climes of one of the world’s poorest nations.”

Lest anyone think otherwise, these factory farms generate poverty in the nations that house them, as Grescoe demonstrates; they privatize and cut down highly productive mangrove forests that once sustained fishing communities, leaving fetid dead zones in their wake.

 https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/02/all-you-can-eat-shrimp-side-ecologial-ruin/

rangerrebew:
I just happened on this story this morning.  I find it interesting green alarmists aren't squealing as they do over cows!  I guess they think the little buggers are just too hard to do away with to save the earth. *****rollingeyes*****

Smokin Joe:

--- Quote from: rangerrebew on May 23, 2024, 10:58:21 am ---I just happened on this story this morning.  I find it interesting green alarmists aren't squealing as they do over cows!  I guess they think the little buggers are just too hard to do away with to save the earth. *****rollingeyes*****

--- End quote ---
Nobody is studying shrimp farts. It's always something anal with those people.

roamer_1:
same with termites, btw

libertybele:
I have never tasted shrimp.  I don't like it and won't eat it because of the smell of it when it's cooking.  Not a fan of any shellfish period. I've never tried crab, or clams either.  One bite of lobster was enough to turn me off to all shellfish.  Oysters, they are just plain nasty looking.

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