Free News
May 11, 2007
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Blue Ridge Aquaculture
In Martinsville, Virginia, USA, Blue Ridge Aquaculture is constructing a $2.8 million facility to study closed-cycle shrimp farming. You can view recent pictures (March 2007) of the facility at Blue Ridge's website (http://www.blueridgeaquaculture.com).
It's difficult for USA shrimp farms to compete with the inexpensive, frozen, pond-raised shrimp imported from Asia. Blue Ridge hopes to avoid that competition by delivering "live" shrimp to niche markets.
When the shrimp facility is completed, researchers from Virginia Tech will begin a USA Department of Agriculture-funded study to evaluate the technology, management practices and distribution channels for farmed shrimp. The study will delve into every aspect of shrimp aquaculture, from nutrition to the efficiency of production. The project is the result of several years of cooperation between Blue Ridge Aquaculture and Virginia Tech and is intended largely as a steppingstone to larger things. The facility will help determine how much space Blue Ridge Aquaculture will need to increase its production to about 35 million pounds per year!
Dr. George Flick (Virginia Tech) will determine the consumer acceptability, quality and shelf life of the shrimp produced at the aquaculture facility. The color and texture of cultured shrimp will be compared to Gulf shrimp. A sensory panel and microbiological studies will help determine the shelf life of the shrimp. In addition, hydrostatic pressure (kills microorganisms with water pressure) of the cooked product will be evaluated in terms of its effect on consumer acceptability, incidence of pathogenic microbes, and overall shelf life. Information: Dr. George J. Flick, Jr., Virginia Tech, Science and Technology, FST Building, Room 25-C, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA (phone 540-231-6965, email flickg@vt.edu).
Dr. Daniel Kauffman (Virginia Tech) will explore the market potential of live shrimp using Washington, D.C., as a test city. He will place live product in retail tanks and survey customers to determine buying preferences and habits. This will help estimate the potential market for live shrimp in the D.C. area. Using census data, Kauffman will extrapolate his findings to the large East Coast market.
An aquaculture production model that allows users to include production and marketing risk considerations is also being tested. This model will allow aquaculture producers to evaluate the economic potential of an enterprise. Dr. Dan Taylor is leading this effort.
This project involves faculty from four colleges, eight academic departments and two research and extension centers--plus private industry, state government and the federal government. Information: Dr. Daniel Kauffman, Virginia Tech, Virginia Seafood AREC, 102 South King Street, Hampton, VA 23669 USA (phone 757-727-4861, email dkauffma@vt.edu).
A recent article in the Washington Post made the following comments about Blue Ridge Aquaculture: "...No shrimp farm is quite like the one under construction in Martinsville, Virginia, near the North Carolina border. Scheduled to begin tests within 90 days, Blue Ridge Aquaculture's 30,000-square-foot indoor facility is expected to produce nearly 50 million pounds of fresh, live shrimp per year, from a total recycling system with no waste or discharge."
"'We're going to alter the way people eat fish,' says company president Bill Martin. 'It's all about volume. And we have no interest in frozen.'"
"'The live market for shrimp has never been serviced, and it's a golden marketing opportunity,'" says George Flick, Blue Ridge adviser and professor of food science and technology at Virginia Tech. By the end of the year he hopes to have live shrimp in supermarkets in the Washington area.
An article in Fish Farming News contained the following information on Blue Ridge Aquaculture:
"Martin said he has located a 500-acre site situated on the Smith River not far from Martinsville where Blue Ridge hopes to build a completely new facility that will produce tilapia and shrimp in separate, but integrated system. 'It's within a few miles of where we're sitting now,' Martin said. 'The site has developed, but construction can't begin until we finish our tests at the shrimp facility.'"
"Current testing, Martin believes, will provide the data and experience needed to guide development of the planned growout operation, and for the hatchery that will be needed to support a 35-million-pound shrimp production target, plus give Blue Ridge an idea of how many annual harvests it can expect from a single system."
"Blue Ridge is developing a system in which each tank will have several 'decks' about a foot apart where shrimp will be contained. Martin hopes to achieve stocking densities of 1-1/2 pounds per gallon. Initially, he said, the company aims to sell its shrimp into the 'top of the marketplace', producing 8-12 count animals. Some production could also go into the live market."
"Plans call for the new facility to employ a hands-free harvesting system, Martin said. Tilapia and shrimp will swim directly into the processing area of the facility where they will he graded and moved either into the company's live haul trucks or onto the processing line."
"The planned facility will draw its water from the nearby Smith River and will encompass a 30-acre covered reservoir that will hold a 10-day supply of water for normal operations. That way, if there should ever be an environmental problem with the facility's water source, the company will have time to deal with the problem."
"In addition to growout facilities, the site will be home to a hatchery where Blue Ridge will spawn its own shrimp and tilapia broodstock, and a processing facility."
"In dealing with shrimp waste, Martin has even more imaginative plans. He said the shrimp heads can be processed into fishmeal, and he believes there will be sufficient shrimp shells to make it economical to refine the waste into chitin."
"As Martin envisions further development of his comprehensive vertical integration plans, he said Blue Ridge will also build its own oxygen plant, and possibly a feed mill." Blue Ridge currently raises nearly four million pounds of tilapia a year in a 100,000-square-foot, closed-cycle system. Every week, an estimated 75,000 pounds of live tilapia are shipped from the facility to markets in New York, Boston, Toronto (Canada) and other locations. Information: Bill Martin, Blue Ridge Aquaculture, P.O. Drawer 1152, Martinsville, VA 24114 USA (phone 276-632-9440, email blkz3@aol.com, webpage http://www.blueridgeaquaculture.com).
Sources: 1. Blue Ridge Aquaculture Webpage (http://www.blueridgeaquaculture.com/). Shrimp pilot facility (http://www.blueridgeaquaculture.com/index.cfm/topic/shrimp). Angela I. Correa (Virginia Tech News). April 14, 2007. 2. Washington Post. As Fresh as They Get Three Young Guys Hope to Feed an Appetite for Fresh, Sustainable Farmed Shrimp (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041700417_2.html?hpid=smartliving). Walter Nicholls. April 18, 2007. 3. Fish Farming News (http://www.fish-news.com). Production on a grand scale: Tilapia, shrimp, cobia all key to Blue Ridge Aquaculture's Future. Stephen Rappaport (email srappaport@fish-news.com). V-14, Issue-1, P-16, 2007.
Thailand
Child Labor and Human Trafficking in the Shrimp Processing Industry
On April 24, 2007, Reuters news service reported:
Half of Thailand's shrimp goes to the United States, where it ends up on the shelves of retail giants like Wal-Mart and Costco, according to Poj Aramwattananont, president of the Thai Frozen Foods Association. Japan and Europe each account for another 20 percent.
Of the 200 people working in a barn-like processing plant during an unannounced visit by Reuters, nearly half appeared to be in their early teens or younger--clear evidence of child labor in an industry worth $2 billion a year in exports.
Samut Sakhon...It is 7:30 in the evening and an excited chatter fills the room as 11-year-old Nampeung and her friends get their work checked before clearing their desks and heading home. But this is not a scene from the end of a school day. The desks are the metal tables where she spends six days a week shelling shrimp. Nampeung is an ethnic Mon girl from military-ruled Myanmar and has been working in a seafood processing plant in central Thailand for nearly three years. Even though she can only dream of going to school, Nampeung is one of the lucky ones. She makes up to $9 a day--more than the province's minimum wage--and sees nothing wrong with children her age working. "The old people are so slow," she said with a broad smile, sitting demurely on the floor of the concrete hut next to the factory, which she shares with her mother, father and three siblings.
Other processing plants in the coastal province of Samut Sakhon, 30 miles west of Bangkok, where 40 percent of all Thai shrimps is processed, do not have such a contented workforce.
In Ranya Paew, around 800 men, women and children from deeply impoverished Myanmar--or Burma, as it used to be known--were imprisoned in a compound behind 15-foot walls topped with razor wire and patrolled by armed guards. The people who rescued them told human rights monitors they had to work 18 hours or more a day and were paid $12.20 a month, out of which they had to buy food--mainly rancid pork--from the plant's owner. Those who asked for a break had a metal rod shoved up their nostrils. Three women who asked to leave were paraded in front of the other workers, stripped naked and had their heads shaved. As a result, around 200 men were deported and more than 60 women and children are living in a trafficking victims centre in Bangkok. The plant continues to do business.
The Labor Rights Promotion Network (LPN), a nongovernmental organization, estimates that there are 200,000 Myanmar migrant workers in Samut Sakhon and that only 70,000 of them are legally registered. LPN says the Ranya Paew case is the worst that it has seen.
Wal-Mart and Costco said that none of their shrimp had ever come from Ranya Paew and that strict ethical guidelines for suppliers, as well as audits of processing units in Thailand, ensured they complied with food standards and labor regulations.
Thai Frozen Foods Association chief Poj Aramwattananont also denied the child slavery and trafficking in people charges, saying factories were monitored carefully. "There are no more illegal workers in the Thai food industry because the government registers all the workers properly. We never use child labor," he told Reuters.
Even Thailand's biggest agroindustrial firm, Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF), which farms and processes shrimp, is not untouched by allegations of trafficking in people. According to LPN, when police and immigration officials, firing shots into the air, raided a CPF factory in Samut Sakhon on April 5, 2007, more than 100 Myanmar migrants in the compound tried to escape by swimming a canal.
Narong Kruakrai, general manager of the CPF plant, described the raid as a "regular visit" by immigration police, and said his factory never hired illegal workers. LPN said the workers appeared to have been hired by a third-party broker.
Foreign firms rely on the Thai Labor Ministry, which is responsible for ensuring that Thai processing plants do not use illegal immigrants or child workers, for information on shrimp processing. The ministry, however, is short on staff and enthusiasm and lacks the proper resources to conduct rigorous inspections of the processing plants.
On April 27, 2007, Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) said that it did not employee illegal laborers from Myanmar in its shrimp processing factories near Bangkok. CPF executive vice president Pisit Ohmpornnuwat said reports of more than 100 illegal Myanmar workers fleeing a police raid on a unit in Samut Sakhon province earlier this month were a "misunderstanding". "All laborers have been employed legally on the standard of 18-years-old age and applied on all labor laws and regulations," he said in a statement. "The situation was normal on the visit by the police and immigration officials," he said.
Sources: 1. Reuters. Child laborers toil in Thai seafood factories (http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSBKK26683020070424). Ed Cropley. April 24, 2007. 2. Javno.com. Reuters. Thai Shrimp Firm Denies Illegal Labour Allegations (http://www.javno.com/en/economy/clanak.php?id=39256). April 27, 2007.
Country Reports
Australia
The First Crustacean Cell Line
Kerry Claydon, a Ph.D. student at James Cook University's School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, has published Advances in Crustacean Cell Culture, a study that moves scientists one step closer to creating a crustacean cell line. Claydon's breakthrough came when she successfully "transfected" (introduced foreign DNA) cells from the Australian red claw crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus) with human cancer genes. Her research should lead to "immortal" crustacean cells capable of indefinite replication in the lab.
A shrimp cell line would accelerate disease research, encourage the development of better diagnostic tools, help standardized disease analysis, and allow scientists to work with just cells, rather than live animals.
In the meantime, Claydon will be at Brunei's Department of Fisheries, where she has secured the job of director of shrimp pathology at George Chamberlain's Integrated Aquaculture International, a consulting company that is helping the Brunei Government develop and manage its small shrimp farming industry.
Source: The FishSite. News Crustacean disease breakthrough (http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/4154/crustacean-disease-breakthrough). April 25, 2007.
Bangladesh
35 of 53 Hatcheries Closed
At least 35 of 53 shrimp hatcheries in Cox's Bazar have closed their doors because of a shortage of broodstock (Penaeus monodon) caused by overfishing.
On average 4,000 tons of broodstock are fished from the coastal areas of Cox's Bazar, Kutubdia, St. Martins, Noakhali and Khulna every year. Fishermen from Myanmar, India and Thailand also illegally fish broodstock from the territorial waters of Bangladesh.
Two years ago, broodstock sold for $8.66 to $10.10 each. Now the price is over $100 an animal.
Cox's Bazar Shrimp Fry Traders' Cooperative Association President Noor Mohammad said mature broodstock release at least 10 million eggs every eight months. But the young broodstock (4 to 5 months) that are caught and sold to hatcheries do not release over 50,000 eggs. The juveniles of weak broodstock have high mortality rates and are prone to virus attacks.
District Fishery Officer M. Kabir Ahmed said that the ban on broodstock fishing during the breeding period is not enforced.
Two years ago, a trawler could net 250 broodstock in one trip; now they're likely to get 20-25.
Over 50,000 people earn their living at shrimp hatcheries in Cox's Bazar.
Source: The Daily Star. 35 out of 53 hatcheries closed in Cox's Bazar (http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/23/d70423070193.htm). Muazzem Hossain Shakil. April 23, 2007.
Bangladesh
Looting of Shrimp Farms by Political Leaders
Nine political leaders have been sued for cheating, extortion, felling trees--and looting shrimp farms.
In a separate case, Maniruzzaman, a shrimp cultivator from Katia Master Para in Sadar Upazila, accused six political leaders of looting shrimp and demanding an illegal toll amounting to $7,000. When he refused to pay, the accused, armed with deadly weapons, attacked his farm. They beat up the staff and looted shrimp worth about $4,300.
Source: The Daily Star. Seven BNP leaders sued in Satkhira (http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/04/21/d704210702105.htm). April 21, 2007.
Philippines
GAA Restores Mangroves
In partnership with Conservation International, the Global Aquaculture Alliance has launched a pilot project in the Philippines that will restore mangroves in abandoned shrimp ponds. Daniel Lee, GAA's Best Aquaculture Practices Coordinator, said, "Clearly nature is keen to reclaim some of the ground it has lost. GAA wants to encourage this process through education and by supporting the development of institutional and legal arrangements that prevent the repetition of past mistakes."
Information: Daniel Lee, Global Aquaculture Alliance, 5661 Telegraph Road, Suite 3A, St. Louis, MO 63129 USA (phone 314-293-5500, fax 314-293-5525, email georgec@integra.prserv.net, webpage http://www.gaalliance.org/).
Source: The Global Aquaculture Advocate (http://www.gaalliance.org). Webpage. GAA, Conservation International Launch Philippine Mangrove Project. April 27, 2007.
United Kingdom
Pheromones in Shrimp Feed
The first commercial trials with pheromone-based attractants in shrimp feeds have shown very encouraging results. Trials were carried out under the supervision of United Kingdom's Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in partnership with Kiotech International and in collaboration with local aquaculture and fish institutes in China and Thailand.
The trials were conducted with white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) in Tradt, in southeastern Thailand, over a three month period. Commercial shrimp feed was coated with Kiotech's attractant "Aquatice". The shrimp that received "Aquatice" were 30% larger than the controls.
The use of pheromone-based attractants will lead to a reduction in the amount of waste from uneaten feed. Long-term, pheromone-based technology may permit the use of more sustainable forms of proteins in feeds that are not based on fish oils or fish meal.
Information: Mark Nicholls, Kiotech International, PLC, 78 Coombe Road, New Malden Surrey KT3 4QS, England, United Kingdom (phone 020-8336-6180, email mark.nicholls@lawrenceplc.com, webpage http://www.kiotech.com).
Source: AllAboutFeed.net. Animal Feed & Animal Nutrition News/Encouraging new trials with fish attractants (http://www.allaboutfeed.net/tsal/allaboutfeed.portal/enc/_nfpb/true/_nfpb/true/_pageLabel/ts_page_news/ts_portlet_news_singleeditorschoice_3_actionOverride/___2Fportlets___2Fts___2Fcore___2Fnews_singleeditorschoice___2Fcontent___2FshowDetailsList/_mode/view/ts_portlet_news_singleeditorschoice_3channel/102/ts_portlet_news_singleeditorschoice_3id/8305/_desktopLabel/allaboutfeed). April 25, 2007.
Yemen
$100 Million Project
The Saudi Company for Fish plans to set up a shrimp farm in Yemen at a total cost of $100 million. The president of the company Fahd al-Obaikan said that the company is studying the project and would carry it out soon.
Source: Seafood.com (an online, subscription-based, fisheries news service). Saudi company plans $100 million shrimp farm in Yemen. Ken Coons. Editor and Publisher, John Sackton (phone 781-861-1441, email jsackton@seafood.com). April 24, 2007.
