Fish Reports

All Fish Reports stored here.

Fishy Currency

March 8, 2006

This report details how international finance institutions fund shrimp farms. Part of the Pharmed Shrimp series.

Shrimp Stockpile

March 8, 2006

This report discusses the flood of imported shrimp into the United States.

This report discusses how shrimp farming affects developing countries who produce the popular seafood as well as the consumers in developed countries, such as the U.S. and Japan, who demand it. Part of the Pharmed Shrimp series.

Shell Game

March 8, 2006

This report details the social and environmental impacts of shrimp aquaculture. Part of the Pharmed Shrimp series.

Chemical Cocktail

March 8, 2006

This report details the health impacts of eating farm-raised shrimp. Part of the Pharmed Shrimp series.

Import Alert

May 31, 2007

The Food and Drug Administration oversees the safety of seafood imports. However, inadequate funding and a mediocre inspection program contributed to the federal government agency physically inspecting less than two percent of the 860,000 imported seafood shipments in 2006. Only 0.59 percent of shipments were tested for contaminants in a laboratory. "Import Alert: Government Fails Consumers, Falls Short on Seafood Inspection", looks at data from FDA import refusals of seafood shipments at the border and identifies trends in the data from 2003 to 2006 and highlights issues related to imports of shrimp, the most popular seafood among U.S. consumers.

Fishy Currency Update: April 2006

This is a 5-page insert for the Fishy Currency report with updated information on how international finance institutions are supporting shrimp aquaculture.

Suspicious Shrimp

December 19, 2006

The negative effects of eating industrially produced shrimp may include neurological damage from ingesting chemicals such as endosulfans, an allergic response to penicillin residues or infection by an antibiotic-resistant pathogen such as E. coli.

Offshore Aquaculture: Bad News for the Gulf

October 24, 2007

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been promoting offshore aquaculture –– growing fish in nets or cages between three and 200 miles from shore –– as the best way to increase U.S. seafood output. Now, NOAA wants to establish this large-scale fish farming off the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast.

Fishy Farms

November 9, 2007

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is promoting open ocean aquaculture as a way to reduce the country’s $9.2 billion seafood trade deficit and ease pressures on decimated wild marine fish populations. Despite this substantial financial and political support, open ocean aquaculture has not been shown to be environmentally sustainable, financially viable, or technically possible on a commercial scale. The report, "Fishy Farms: The Problems with Open Ocean Aquaculture", discusses these problematic findings in depth.

Fish Story

April 8, 2008

After a series of safety scares about imported seafood in 2006 and 2007, U.S. consumers are recognizing that more than 80 percent, about 10.7 billion pounds of the seafood they eat, comes from outside the United States. Much of it is imported from Asia and Latin America, regions that have potentially unsafe production practices.