The Shrimp Factor-Americans Love It Now More Than Ever. Why?
Early in the Three 6 Mafia song “Sippin’ on Some Syrup,”
guest rapper Pimp C rhymes: “We eat so many shrimp/ I got iodine
poisoning.” It’s a textbook case of hip-hop hyperbole, but the boast
has some truth to it: Americans do love their decapod crustaceans, be
they grilled, scampied, or slathered in cocktail sauce. Shrimp is, in
fact, the most-consumed seafood in the United States. According to the
National Fisheries Institute, the average American ate 4.2 pounds of
the curved critters in 2004, up from to 2.2 pounds in 1990. How did
shrimp surpass canned tuna, the longtime seafood champ, and become the
nation’s favorite marine nibble?
We have a shrimp-farming revolution to thank. Today, around 90
percent of the shrimp consumed in the United States comes from
overseas, and the overwhelming majority of those imports are
farm-raised. (The leading shrimp-producing nations include China,
Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, and Ecuador.) Soaring production has
depressed prices, which have fallen by $3 to $4 per pound over the past
few years. That’s terrible news for American shrimpers, who are
scrambling to survive. But for those who can’t get enough of Red
Lobster’s “Shrimp Lover’s Tuesday” promotion, we are truly living in a
golden age.
Before the 1980s, less than 1 percent of the world’s shrimp was
farm-raised. Aquaculture experts hadn’t yet figured out how to breed
shrimp in captivity; the only reliable way to obtain eggs was to
harvest them from shrimp caught in the wild. Shrimp farmers also
weren’t sure how best to combat shrimp viruses, or how to adjust water
salinity to maximize growth.
Catching shrimp the old-fashioned way, meanwhile, was an expensive
endeavor; the boats burn through huge amounts of diesel, and many of
the most prized species can be caught only during particular seasons.
As a result, unless you lived near a shrimping hotbed such as
Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, shrimp was a gastronomical luxurythe sort of
thing served at places with tuxedoed waiters and valet parking.
That began to change during the Reagan years, as seafood
technologists figured out how to hatch shrimp eggs under controlled
conditions, then nurse them through the post-larvae stage. Viruses, the
bane of shrimp aquaculture, were brought under control thanks to more
sophisticated filtration and purification systems. Given the high
market prices for shrimp, millions of acres of landparticularly
mangrove forestsin Asia and Latin America were cleared to create
shrimp ponds, where juvenile shrimp are released and grown to a salable
size.
Buyers in the United States liked the farmed shrimp not only because
it was cheaper than the wild version, but because it was available
year-round. Plus, the shrimp could be grown to consistent sizes, which
made for pleasingly uniform dinner-plate presentations.
Mid- and low-priced restaurantslike, say, Sizzlerthat could never
before have offered affordable shrimp began to advertise
all-you-can-eat specials, often in combination with scrawny steaks.
Superstores began to stock bags of frozen, precooked shrimp in their
grocery aisles, allowing party hosts to offer platters of shrimp at
their in-home shindigs. The real watershed, however, came in 1985, when
the fast-food chain Popeyes introduced Cajun Popcorn Shrimp, a
deep-fried dish meant to compete with McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.
Suddenly, shrimp was an everyday food, rather than a special treat.
As prices continued to slide, shrimp consumption rose, nearly
doubling over the last 15 years. Consumption of canned tuna, meanwhile,
remained staticdespite some annual fluctuations, an American in 2004
ate exactly the same amount of canned tuna (3.3. pounds) as in 1990.
This is in part due to tuna’s increasingly dicey reputation for mercury
and in part because prices haven’t changed much: Albacore, the most
popular component in canned tuna, still must be caught in the wild.
Also, though gourmet chefs love experimenting with fresh, sushi-grade
tuna, they’ve never really taken a shine to the Starkist
versionpopcorn tuna, thankfully, has never become a menu staple. Many
of those same chefs, however, have no qualms about using frozen, bagged
shrimp in their recipes.
Shrimp passed canned tuna on the NFI’s most-consumed list in 2001
and has been increasing its lead ever since. A big reason for the
widening gap is consumption at casual-dining restaurants, where seafood
is one of the fastest growing segments; according to the Technomic, a
market-research firm, sales at the likes of Red Lobster will increase
by 4 percent this year. Meanwhile, so-called varied-menu restaurants
like Applebee’s are adding dishes like the Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo
Bowl to satisfy the seafood yen of budget-conscious diners.
There’s a substantial dark side, however, to shrimp’s culinary
triumph. Environmentalists assert that shrimp farms pollute ecosystems
and destroy vital forests. American shrimpers, meanwhile, are being run
out of business, as the deluge of farmed imports have cut prices for
domestic shrimp by as much as 42 percent. In 2004, the U.S. government
imposed tariffs to punish countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, and
Ecuador for shrimp-dumpingthat is, flooding the market with below-cost
product in order to destroy American competitors. But the duties seem
to have had little effect; Thailand, for one, claims that its exports
to the United States have actually increased since the tariffs were put
in place.
The American shrimping industry has also tried to fight back with a
branding effort. The Wild American Shrimp campaign contends that shrimp
caught in the Gulf of Mexico are tastier than shrimp raised in a
Bangladeshi pond. But the strategy is problematic: Much of the shrimp
consumed in the United States is either heavily sauced or deep-fried,
so the nuances of flavor can be hard to distinguish. As long as
breading and frying remains the preparation method of choice for
American shrimp aficionados, Pimp C and millions of his fellow, less
lyrically gifted diners probably won’t sweat how and where their
crustaceans were raised. Just keep ’em coming.
Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a fellow at the New America Foundation.