WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Congressman Garret Graves (South Louisiana) and Congresswoman Mary Sattler Peltola (Alaska) sent a letter to President Biden urging him to immediately halt shrimp imports into the United States from India, following concerning reports of severe food and safety issues and labor violations in Indian shrimp processing facilities.
The reports highlight that shrimp imported from India are farmed and they regularly do not meet domestic health standards; the suppliers themselves know this to be true, evidenced by their tactics to evade detection at American ports. Graves and Peltola noted that there is already high-quality, healthy shrimp caught in America that is being pushed out of the market by foreign shrimp sold at artificially low prices and unsafe for consumption.
“Stop the Great Indian Shrimp Invasion,” said Graves. “We have a bill outstanding right now – the Laws Ensuring Safe Shrimp Act – that addresses this exact issue. We are fighting to protect free and fair trade by ensuring that foreign farmed imports aren’t given an unfair advantage while also threatening Americans’s health. Meanwhile, American shrimpers follow all the rules to keep our health and fisheries safe, and wild, healthy American shrimp are being boxed out of U.S. markets. We need to be doing everything we can to stop bad imports from reaching consumers, especially when we have high-quality, healthy shrimp right here at home.”
“Alaska may not be a major producer of shrimp, but we rely on seafood in a similar way to communities along the Gulf of Mexico,” said Peltola. “Congressman Graves and I have spoken at length about our domestic seafood industries being hurt by a flood of imported and unhealthy seafood products – I’m proud to co-lead his letter to support American shrimpers.”
· According to the Associated Press, Indian shrimp accounts for 40% of the shrimp consumed in the United States.
· A 2020 study conducted by the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center detected contamination in 2/3 of tested samples of shrimp imports available on the market.
· On August 28, 2023, Graves and Congresswoman Kathy Castor (Florida) introduced legislation to stop unsafe, illegally produced shrimp from reaching consumers. The bill provides funding to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure that shrimp in the United States are free of illegal chemicals, safe for human consumption, and not produced using illegal fishing practices.
· Despite Graves’ efforts to fund the FDA and bolster their testing capacity, the FDA routinely tests a fraction of one percent of shrimp imports.
