10 Things You Should Know About the American Seafood Supply [View all]

from Civil Eats:


10 Things You Should Know About the American Seafood Supply
By Paul Greenberg on July 8, 2014


The United States seafood supply is a marvel to behold in its illogic. In spite of the fact that we control more ocean than any country on earth, more than 85 percent of the fish and shellfish we eat is imported. But drill down deeper and it gets even weirder. Here are 10 things that you may not know about the fish on your plate.

1. Some Alaska salmon make a round trip to China.

Because of the incredible cheapness of Chinese labor, it is more cost-effective for seafood companies to freeze the salmon they catch in Alaska, send it to China, defrost it, bone it, and send back to the United States. This is also true of a large amount of our squid and the “white fish” and “fake crab” rendered from Alaskan pollock.

2. A portion of the bay scallops we import from China originally came from Martha’s Vineyard.

About half the bay scallops we consume come to us from Asia. But it’s fishier than that. In 1982, a Chinese seafood farming scientist came to Martha’s Vineyard’s Tisbury Pond and took 120 bay scallops back to Qindao. On the way, most of them died. But 26 survived. Those surviving scallops went on to become the genetic basis for a multimillion dollar industry, a portion of which is exported back to the United States.

3. The sixth most popular seafood in America is a fish that can breathe air and that you’ve probably never heard of.

The pangasius catfish is grown mostly in Vietnam and is primarily an export product. When its ponds get too low in oxygen because of overcrowding, the fish can stick its mouths above the surface of the water and take a breath of air. It is one of the few fish species that can do this.

4. Thailand, the largest producer of shrimp for export to the United States, has some serious problems.

In the last year, Thailand, which provides us with a huge quantity of shrimp every year, was struck by a new shrimp disease called Early Mortality Syndrome. It wiped out a billion dollars worth of shrimp. Then, last month, The Guardian revealed that a portion of the fish meal used to feed Thai shrimp is caught by vessels using slave labor. ..................(more)

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