On Tuesday, FoodPrint, a program operated by the Grace Communication Foundation, published the thirteenth episode of the podcast What You’re Eating, titled “Endless Shrimp.”
Hosted by Jerusha Klemperer, the Director of FoodPrint, the 53-minuted episode features excerpts of interviews with the Executive Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, John Williams; one of the Southern Shrimp Alliance’s trade attorneys, Nathan Rickard; Lee Van Der Voo, a journalist and the investigations editor at Civil Eats; Andrea Reusing, a chef at the restaurant Lantern in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Dr. Urvashi Rangan, the Chief Science Advisor for FoodPrint.
“Endless Shrimp” delves into the sources of shrimp sold in the U.S. market, providing an overview of the U.S. domestic shrimp industry and discussing environmental, labor, social, and food safety issues raised with increasing levels of imported shrimp entering the United States.
Of particular note, Dr. Rangan describes her role in Consumer Reports’ investigation into the prevalence of banned antibiotics in foreign farm-raised shrimp sold in the U.S. marketplace. As Dr. Rangan explains, the shrimp aquaculture industry’s widespread, indiscriminate use of a diverse range of antibiotics raises substantial public health concerns and the investigators at Consumer Reports were surprised by the scope of the problems they uncovered.
Lee Van Der Voo, author of the book “The Fish Market,” provides an overview of some of the environmental and human rights issues implicated in foreign shrimp supply chains, while also describing the myriad challenges currently confronting U.S. commercial fishing industries.
Listen to “Endless Shrimp,” Episode 13 of What You’re Eating here: https://foodprint.org/what-youre-eating/episode-13-endless-shrimp/
Read Lee Van Der Voo’s “The U.S. Is a Dumping Ground for Illegal Seafood. Some Lawmakers Want to Clean Up the Market,” Civil Eats (June 13, 2022) here: https://civileats.com/2022/06/13/the-us-is-a-dumping-ground-for-illegal-seafood-some-lawmakers-want-to-clean-up-the-market/