Why it's a good idea to stop eating shrimp

[XemaSab]

Shrimp is the most popular seafood in the United States, with Americans eating an average of 4.1 pounds per person annually. As delicious as shrimp may be, we actually should not be eating them. The process that delivers bags of frozen shrimp to your grocery store at cheap prices has devastating ecological consequences, and you’ll probably not want to touch that shrimp ring ever again after reading what’s really happening behind the scenes.

Shrimp is either farmed or wild, but neither option is good for the environment. Farmed shrimp are kept in pools on the coast, where the tide can refresh the water and carry waste out to sea. Ponds are prepared with heavy doses of chemicals such as urea, superphosphate, and diesel. Then the shrimp receive pesticides, antibiotics (some that are banned in the U.S., but used overseas), piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine), sodium tripolyphosphate, borax, and caustic soda.

Shrimp farmers have destroyed an estimated 38 percent of the world’s mangroves to create shrimp ponds, and the damage is permanent. Not only do the mangroves not return long after production has ended, but the surrounding areas become wastelands. According to a Yale University research paper, shrimp farming has made certain areas of Bangladesh completely unlivable for people: “The introduction of brackish-water shrimp aquaculture… has, in turn, caused massive depeasantization and ecological crisis throughout the region.”

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/shrimp-may-be-small-their-environmental-impact-devastating.html

[Neoma]

1. ... Okay, no more shrimp.

Any others to avoid?

[stuntcat]

3. all meats are awful for the environment

the land, water and energy wasted. I think the fact we can all live without so much of it is an obvious reason we need to quit it.
I know it would happen slowly but it would be an instant help to the planet! And maybe the food that's fed to the animals could go to the people who are starving win-win!

Very few people will stop eating it, but just cutting back would make a GREAT difference.

[Neoma]

7. I cut back on meat intake...

Not sure if I can stop eating pork fried rice. And I may eat sushi here and there...I'm addicted to Asian food now. Sole fish fillet? Yum.

The only time I eat shrimp these days is when it's in eggrolls.

[stuntcat]

8. cutting back!

If everyone would do that it would save so much! land, water, everything

[caraher]

2. Fortunately for me I never started

Seems to me that even 30 or so years ago shrimp was something of an exotic delicacy in the midwest, while today it's something routinely bought by the pound from the nearest supermarket.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. no seafood for over 6 years

after I read an article like this back then.

[hunter]

5. We ought to rename some kind of insect as a "shrimp."

It's all about the marketing.

Something like this that could be raised anywhere:



http://bugsfordinner.blogspot.com/2008/12/cool-new-acquisition-nsenene.html

[stuntcat]

6. wow

wow interesting ty!

If people had been eating these bugs all along and then you showed them a shrimp and said "eat this" then most of them would be so grossed out by it.
And if anyone things coming from the dirt is nastier than coming from the ocean just ask them how many times they peed in it or if they know how much mess has been dumped there.