In Thailand, Panisuan Jamnarnwej, president emeritus of the Thai Frozen Foods Association, reckons that EMS could cut the country's usual annual output in half this year to 300,000 tons. The shortage has had a big impact on some of the country's largest companies.
Charoen Pokphand Foods PCL CPF.TH 0.00% reported that its first-quarter operating profit dropped 70% from a year earlier to 3.44 billion baht ($109.9 million).
Thiraphong Chansiri, the president of Thai Union Frozen Products PCL, TUF.TH +0.41% the country's biggest exporter, says sales and earnings in the company's shrimp division will decline 30% this year, after first-quarter profit fell 54% to 674 million baht. "We see a difficult time for the local shrimp sector through 2013," he says.
The disease could cost Asia's shrimp industry some $1 billion a year, according to the Global Aquaculture Alliance, a trade group based in St. Louis.
Identifying and containing the disease has proved difficult. On a recent sweltering day, CP Foods executives joined officials from Thailand's Fisheries Department to inspect the shrimp farms sprawling along the coast east of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand.
They agreed to help small, local farmers come to grips with the problem by improving hygiene and focusing on cultivating heartier shrimp that are better able to defend against EMS.
Researchers sample juvenile shrimp once they have passed the larval stage. Only after the animals are screened for the disease are they moved from the nursery to the vast ponds, covered with netting to prevent birds from snacking and lined with tough plastic sheeting to stop crabs from entering and spreading other diseases.
It remains unclear how the deadly syndrome emerged. Scientists at the University of Arizona have identified a unique strain of a relatively common bacterium, vibrio parahaemolyticus, which can be found in brackish coastal waters where shrimp farms typically thrive.
CP Foods researchers suggest that requiring a 30-day quarantine for shrimp larvae would contain the disease and ensure shrimp survival.
Experts are watching the current batch of shrimp under development, which hatched less than two months ago, to see if they can survive until three months. At that point, they will be able to reproduce.
Many shrimp-industry insiders are hopeful that now that the problem has been identified, production could ratchet up again soon.
At a meeting with analysts in May, CP Foods executives said they hoped the company would be able to resume normal output by the third quarter.
