Understanding Seafood in Asia
Well it’s been a while and I have had a busy several months, but it’s definitely time to move this blog forward.
I am now in Asia, where I will be roaming about for the next several months, trying to learn more about the aquaculture seafood supply that enters the US and Canada. In the US alone, over 80% of the seafood that is consumed is imported. As someone who spends his life trying to learn about how to make seafood supplies sustainable in order to ensure healthy food and a healthy planet, an understanding of the supply chain and how it works is critical. Furthermore, China alone produces approximately 70% of global aquaculture supplies and the rest of Asia produces the vast majority of the remaining 30%. This means that any understanding of the global picture for aquaculture production must encompass China and the rest of Asia. It was for these reasons that I packed up my suitcase and went on a road trip for an indefinite period of time to Southeast Asia beginning in October 2009.
The opportunity and idea for this trip was generated by my involvement in the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue (more on this in a future posting). The process is seeking to develop performance-based standards (i.e. not best management practices) that will ensure ecological and social sustainability for the aquaculture industry. With this type of process, consolidating input from as many stakeholders as possible is critical. The process seeks to create these standards in order to form a definition of sustainability for shrimp aquaculture production that can be used for certification and by major seafood buyers interested in sourcing sustainable seafood for their business. For the Shrimp Aquaculture Industry, 85% of production comes from Asia, making Asian shrimp producers a very important stakeholder to engage for the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue. This trip will involve meetings, site visits, and hopefully some key insights that I plan to share with you via this blog, so stay tuned!