According to the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refusals of foreign shrimp for banned antibiotics in 2024 were at their highest rates since 2016.
The FDA refused 81 shipments for antibiotic contamination last year, with the vast majority of contaminated products coming from India (31) and Vietnam (18). Many of the refused shipments came from Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP)-certified producers and processors.
“Antiobtic use in shrimp supply chains is overwhelmingly concentrated with two countries, India and Vietnam, that constitute only a small subset of the countries engaged in shrimp aquaculture,” the SSA said in a review of the year’s refusal data.
The remaining 32 shrimp refusals came from shrimp exported from China (18), Bangladesh (6), Ecuador (2), Thailand (2), Hong Kong (1), Japan (1), Malaysia (1), and Indonesia (1).
A 2019 analysis from the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA) tied the use of antibiotics in Southeast Asian shrimp farming to “a poverty-driven production system” where the consequences of losing animals to disease is financially catastrophic.
“Poverty-driven production paradigms are highly susceptible to this abuse. Farmers who would go bankrupt from single crop failures make choices that are understandable, even if irresponsible and in the long run, foolish,” the analysis said.
While the analysis said that the toxicity of an antibiotic in shrimp people consume is rarely an issue, scientists are concerned that antibiotic use in aquaculture contributes to the development of antimicrobrial resistance.
An analysis of data from regulatory bodies in Japan, the E.U., and the U.S. bore out the same trend.
Between 2012 and 2024, most of the antibiotic-contaminated shrimp refused from Japan and the E.U. originated in Vietnam and India.
