Blaming imported shrimp for the troubles of the domestic US wild shrimp industry is a "great hoax" according to Tom Mazzetta, ceo of the Mazzetta Company, Highland Park, Illinois, one of the country's largest importers, which markets shrimp under the Seamazz brand.
"Here's the dirty secret; the price of US shrimp is set at the docks by the processors. Curiously, that price is consistent throughout the domestic industry," Mazzetta wrote in an op-ed piece, and that price is low because processors and distributors haven't bothered to give consumers any reason to pay premium prices for wild shrimp.
"If that's the case, then of course fishermen are getting less for their product than they deserve. Naturally, they assign the blame to farmed shrimp producers as the only other competing force in the marketplace," he wrote. "For those of us in the shrimp business this isn't news, but its clear from recent media reports and legal filings that many people out there still believe that the price of farmed shrimp is the reason the wild shrimp industry has never gotten the prices they feel they deserve."
The Southern Shrimp Alliance has joined the Coalition of Gulf Shrimp Industries (COGSI) in claiming that the governments of seven nations -- China, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam -- are subsidizing their industries at home, driving down the cost and price of shrimp sold in the US. The Coalition has argued this practice, known as "dumping," is unfair to domestic producers, and filed a petition for punitive duties on imports. Both Vietnam and Indonesia have denied their farmed shrimp operations get any subsidies. But dumping accusations are nothing new, Mazzetta said.
"For many years, weve heard that the major cause for the financial woes of domestic shrimp producers is the influx of cheap imported shrimp," he noted. "Our domestic shrimp producers have continually bashed imported product in the media and with policy-makers, and have pursued any number of trade cases against
imported shrimp in an effort to drive the price up or the demand down... Putting the merits of the case aside, the time has come to have a candid discussion about domestic and imported shrimp and the great hoax that has been perpetuated for far too long.
There is an essential difference between shrimp. It is based on the costs of producing wild caught versus farmed shrimp.
"We don't farm shrimp in the US, which is why it costs a heck of a lot more money to bring our domestic shrimp to the marketplace. It's not the same product as a farmed shrimp, and there is no way a wild product can compete on a price scale with a farmed product. Nor can wild caught shrimp compete in terms of volume,
consistency, and year-round availability. The key to overcoming that significant cost difference is intense marketing to ensure consumers understand why they should pay a higher price for wild product. Wild Alaska Salmon comes to mind as a great example."
"The time has come to put an end to this hoax. As has been said many times, the key to success for wild US shrimp starts with domestic producers spending more effort [and money] developing and promoting their product and less effort racing to the bottom on price and then faulting farmed producers for it. Farmed and wild caught shrimp are two drastically different products that shouldn't be competing on price at the seafood counter or in the courtroom."
