Louisiana Foods Fish Fact for:
SHRIMP

How is it that one of the world's biggest, most actively traded commodities got saddled with a diminutive name like "shrimp"? There's certainly nothing "shrimpy" about a resource that produces nearly 3 million metric tons (live weight) of seafood a year. Nor is there anything "small-change" about the multi billion dollar industry that's turned that resource into one of the world's most popular foods.

Perhaps too popular lately. Once the domain of U.S. consumers hungry for fried shrimp platters and Super Bowl snacks, the consumption of shrimp is going increasingly global. Europeans are eating warmwater shrimp; coldwater species are hot sellers in Japanese sushi bars; and China, the world's biggest producer just two years ago, is now importing product for its hungry, upwardly mobile citizens. Shrimp may be small animals, but their impact on the world seafood market is anything but.

Species Specifics
  • According to FAO, there are 342 species of shrimp of commercial value. Of those, 109 are Penaeid species, the dominant type of warmwater shrimp; 34 are Pandalids, or coldwater shrimp.
  • Because they're primarily deepwater animals, coldwater shrimp do not ingest mud, sand, etc., with their food, one reason their veins are clearer than those of warmwater shrimp.
  • Of the estimated 733,000 tons of farmed shrimp grown in the world in 1994, the top species, by far, was black tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon at 61%, followed by Western white shrimp Penaeus vannamei at 15%.
  • Thailand is the top foreign shrimp supplier to the U.S. market, shipping more than 80,000 tons of product in 1994. Other major suppliers are Ecuador (48,100), Mexico (22,900), China (22,800) and India (22,600).
  • The average American consumes around 2.5 pounds of shrimp a year, more than Europeans at 1.8 pounds per person, but far less than the Japanese at 8.8 pounds.

The above information is from the Seafood Leader Vol. 15, No. 5.


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