Do I Dare Eat Asian Shrimp from Costco?

In early January, I spent a few days in Naples, Florida, a beautiful town of extremely wealthy people with excellent skin tone.

My first stop was at The Local, a superb restaurant run by owner-chef Jeff Mitchell, a straight-ahead dude who seems totally committed to sourcing his ingredients locally…and in Naples, that’s a little easier to do year-round than it is, say, here.

After a salad of beautiful Gulf shrimp, I chatted with Mitchell about his locally sourced shrimp, which come pretty much right off the boat to him. After I complimented him on their taste, he told me that Gulf shrimp were also safer to eat because, as he said, “Southeast Asian shrimp are sprayed with chemicals that you end up eating.”

Now, I’d heard that environmental and labor practices in Asian shrimp farms were questionable, but I was curious about the claims that they might be unhealthy to eat.  I was particularly interested in that back home in the Midwest, we’d just bought a five pound bag of Vietnamese shrimp from Costco because, you know, the price was right.

Here’s what I found out about the potential health hazards of eating Asian shrimp:

• It is illegal to use antibiotics in U.S. shrimp farms, but because most of the shrimp eaten in the United States is produced elsewhere, this law does little to protect most consumers. In a 2003 survey of Thai shrimp producers, 74 percent reported using antibiotics on their shrimp.
• Shrimp producers often use large quantities of chemicals to kill fish, mollusks, fungi, plants, insects and parasites in their ponds. Some of these chemicals can remain in the shrimp, which is then served to consumers, potentially causing human health impacts.
• Imported farmed shrimp comes with a whole bevy of contaminants: antibiotics, residues from chemicals used to clean pens, filth like mouse hair, rat hair, and pieces of insects.
• Untreated animal manure and human waste are used as feed in shrimp farms in Thailand.

Feeling queasy yet?

And that’s not even getting into the potentially unhealthy practices at Southeast Asian shrimp processing plants, which Bloomberg graphically detailed.

The environmental impact of shrimp farming is also devastating, but my personal experience is that no one cares much about that…until it hits them at home.

We are members of Costco. I like shopping there, and I get some great buys on cheese, and wine and clothing. Everything, actually. Costco has even made some serious strides in eliminating unsustainable seafood from its shelves.

Greenpeace, somewhat predictably, judges Costco’s efforts in this area to be “mediocre,” but there’s no pleasing some people.

For us, though, when it comes to shrimp, we’re going to have to shop more carefully. Disturbingly, the last time we were looking at shrimp at Costco, we were surprised that the country of origin was actually not listed on some bags. As 99% of the world’s shrimp comes from Asian sources, so it’s virtually certain that those big bags of shrimp, priced right, were from that part of the world. 

Now, this is not to say that American shrimp farms are golden, but the U.S. does have some strict regulations in place, so I feel better about buying American, even though it costs significantly more.

A good bet, from a health standpoint, seems to be wild-caught shrimp from Alaska or the Gulf. It also tastes fantastic, which may be reason enough to prefer it. It’s more expensive, yes, so the solution is simple: eat less, enjoy more.