Socialist Republic of Vietnam

By Aaron Kuriloff
Tuesday March 02, 2004
St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau

(Posted with author's permission)

The Louisiana shrimp industry's fight against low-cost, farm-raised imports could have some unanticipated, and unwanted, consequences, including lost domestic jobs and higher consumer prices, according to seafood dealers, economists and industry experts.

Though shrimp harvesters blame imports for a collapse in dockside prices, and have filed a petition with the International Trade Commission accusing Asian and Latin American producers of dumping, importers said their shrimp supports an industry with a domestic economic impact valued in one 2003 study at more than $9 billion and that convincing consumers of wild shrimp's inherent superiority might serve harvesters better than tariffs.

Thomas Murray, a coastal development specialist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences who performed the study for the American Seafood Distributors Association, said imported shrimp are worth about 12 percent more to the United States' economy than all other seafood products harvested in this country combined.

"There's a lot of margin made on imported shrimp," Murray said.

Raising the price of shrimp arriving from overseas would affect people up and down the supply chain, said Walter Keithly, an economist with the Louisiana State University Coastal Fisheries Institute. As the cost of raw product increases, restaurants and dealers will almost certainly pass those costs on to consumers.

"Certainly, the more imports are reduced with countervailing duties, the more you'd expect domestic shrimp prices to increase," Keithly said. "If you see an increase in your dockside price, it would be translated at the retail level."

Rather than pay more, many industry watchers assume, consumers would simply eat less shrimp.

Instead of seeking recourse in protectionist trade practices, some experts say Louisiana shrimpers should focus on marketing domestic, wild-caught shrimp as a superior product to farm-raised imports.

A similar plan helped Alaskan fishers compete with salmon farms, by turning wild Alaskan salmon into a boutique product, said Van Landry, a director of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Louisiana, a counterpart to the agency that helped Alaska develop its brand.

The effort succeeded in raising producer prices between 15 and 100 percent, Landry said, because it created an independent quality-grading program -- like the meat-grading system run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- that assured consumers of a high-quality product.

Within several years, Landry said, Alaska had created several regional brands of wild salmon, including Copper River, Cook Inlet and Aleutia salmon, Landry said.

Duties might stem the flood of imports briefly, he said. But creating uniform quality standards, shortening supply chains and studying small business management could help shrimpers survive long-term.

"It's not a silver bullet, but it will be a pillar on which the industry can build," he said. "At the heart of this, the industry is going to have to make some radical changes. Fortunately, the trade action looks like it will give them the time to do that."

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Aaron Kuriloff can be reached at akuriloff@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3836