Christmas means a sudden demand for prawns. But with imports down again this year, Australian prawn farmers say they are being stymied by “green tape.”
Floods in Thailand were expected to cut the harvest in the world’s largest shrimp exporter by 10 to 15 percent this year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Globefish market information arm, pushing international prices up to 40 per cent higher.
The impact of the floods was compounded by disease outbreaks in Vietnam, where mass premature death of prawns wiped out nearly 98 percent of crops in the Mekong Delta, although India and Indonesia boosted production.
Nick Moore, manager of the Gold Coast Marine Aquaculture prawn farm and president of the Australian Prawn Farmers Association, said imports were certainly down.
