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The Human Costs

Local communities throughout the world depend on mangroves for their survival. Women gather shellfish, mussels, crabs and other seafood to feed their families and sell in local markets. Fishermen gain access to the sea through mangroves – access that is destroyed when shrimp farms are built.

With nowhere else to turn, people resort to collecting shrimp feed, harvesting the crop or processing shrimp for export. Plants resemble sweatshops, with dangerous working conditions, low pay, physical abuse and child labor. Land for farms is often seized outright.

Some who have protested the expansion of the shrimp aquaculture industry have been murdered. Further, rice paddies are commonly converted to shrimp farms. In Thailand, half of shrimp farms are believed to have once been rice fields. Once salinated, the land cannot revertto rice growing.

Coastal communities in the U.S. also suffer. American shrimpers cannot compete with the flood of cheap shrimp imports. Every year, droves of shrimpers are forced to sell their boats and look for land-based jobs, when all they know is the sea. From 2000 to 2002, U.S. shrimp production fell by more than 50 percent. Nearly 90 percent of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. is imported.

Ecuadorian woman impacted by shrimp farming.

• At the Environment's Expense
• Consumers' Health Pays
• The Price of Global Trade

What You Can Do!

• Do not buy farm-raised shrimp.
• Talk to your seafood grocer about the costs of farm-raised shrimp.
• Ask for local or U.S. “pot caught” shrimp.
• Support local fishermen and local seafood.

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