Walmart and Certified shrimp farming

[cortez marine]

Wal-Mart shrimp certification seen as threat to mangroves
Date: 29-01-2006
Source:MAP Email: mangroveap@olympus.net
Wal-Mart partnership with Darden and the Global Aquaculture Alliance to "certify" farmed shrimp utilizing very faulty standards will threaten the vital coastal wetland areas, including mangrove forests, according to s press release from the Mangrove Action Project (MAP).

Alfredo Quarto, MAP's executive director, will be attending the Seattle Seafood Summit conference to be held Jan. 29-31 at the Mariott Waterfront Hotel handing out a MAP paper to participants detailing the problems of the move. MAP believes this certification scheme will lead to further rapid global mangrove forest loss, endangering coastal communities by removing the protective greenbelts that can greatly lessen the impacts from future tsunamis and hurricanes, among other important considerations.

According to MAP, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, and Darden Restaurants, parent company of Red Lobster, intend to, starting in early 2006, "begin certifying all of their imported farm-raised shrimp to ensure it is grown in a sustainable way, with minimal impacts on the environment." The certifying organization chosen for third-party review is the Aquaculture Certification Council (ACC), www.aquaculturecertification.org, which is utilizing a description of Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) developed by the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA), itself a powerful shrimp industry consortium.

MAP is familiar with the BAP standards and similar sets of standards established over the years, and have found these to be inadequate in ensuring ecological sustainability and social equity. After reviewing the BAP standards promoted by the GAA, MAP and the Environmental Justice Foundation, www.ejfoundation.org, have both provided detailed comments to Wal-Mart and GAA about their inadequacy. Similar comments have been provided in the past to GAA, as the BAP standards have been in place for several years.

In the release, MAP expresses concern about the "all you can eat" shrimp fever that is spreading like its own pandemic across the United States, leaving ruin and despair in the developing nations in the global South where the great majority of farmed shrimp are produced and exported. In view of the 2004 tsunami that devastated these same coastal regions afflicted with widespread mangrove wetland loss, and in view of the now much better understood relation between coastal wetlands and the buffering effects these have against tsunamis (Indian Ocean) and hurricanes (US-Caribbean (Katrina, Rita, Mitch, etc.)), MAP ask US consumers, "How much more mangrove loss from farmed shrimp can you stomach?" MAP urges all consumers to lessen their appetites for farmed shrimp, and demand that the misleading and inadequate attempt at certification now being promoted by Wal-Mart, Darden and the Global Aquaculture Alliance be discontinued immediately.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So much for the novelty and nobility of the concept of certification.
Then again, our own certification groups certified the depleted Buhol areas of Batasan and Clarin off Buhol as sustainable . Walmarts certification has to be at least as credible as that.
Soon Websters will list whitewash as a synonym for certification if these 'pay to play' gambits become the corporate norm.
Steve

[billsreef]

Ah yes, the fox guarding the proverbial hen house.

[cortez marine]

YES BUT,
BUT THE DIFFERENCE TODAY IS THAT THE PATH INTO THE HENHOUSE IS BEING ENABLED BY THE World Wildlife Fund AND THE FRONT GROUP IT SET UP...THE MARINE STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL.

THE World Wildlife Fund SET UP A FRONTGROUP FOR US AS WELL; MARINE AQUARIUM COUNCIL.

If they certified the destruction of Thailands Phuket peninsular mangrove coastline as sustainable...what will they not certify as sustainable in our trade?
Steve

[billsreef]

The fox just learned from the wolf about wearing sheeps clothing

They count on people not knowing the reality and falling for the feel good words. After all aquacultured shrimp sounds better than wild harvest if you don't know 3rd world cooperate shrimp culture methods. How many people know the shrimp farmers dig out the mangroves to make nice intertidal pens for the shrimp that simple get abandoned a couple years later when they become unusable due to the build up of waste and silt and simply move down the coast and start all over again leaving a path of ruined habitat behind