Eat Arkansas

"Brave blames the demise of his shrimp business on the high cost of maintaining the ponds, coupled with the fact that most people, too often, chose the cheaper (albeit lesser quality) shrimp grown on huge farms and imported from places like Vietnam and Malaysia. "

I have to disagree with part of this. I know a chef who tried several times to get Brave New Shrimp, but the food distributor dropped the brand because they couldn't produce enough to keep it in stock. There was demand out there, even at the higher price, but it seems the supply couldn't keep up with it.

True dat.

Most major food suppliers want to see a large enough minimum order and product movement that equates to profit for them along the way.

Add to this an already 'higher' price and *most* consumers will not opt to spend the *extra* money on these type of products compared to the lesser priced versions readily available.

Simple capitalistic economics.

Even though I think Brave New Restaurant is so completely overrated, it's too bad this venture didn't work out for Mr. Brave. He should be proud of himself for trying to raise awareness by supporting and selling fish products in a responsible and organic manner- and I'll certainly praise him for that. I think it's great.

And Wellwood is right. At the end of the day, profit rules over general food quality and environmentally-sound harvesting practices. *Most* people want immediate gratification. Never mind the hormones, antibiotics or consuming fish that feed on their own shit. And never mind that the general nature of fish farms lends to the deterioration of its surrounding environment.

Who cares about investing in your body or showing some real consideration for the environment when you can buy total crap on sale at Kroger or Wal-Mart?

Not enough people, that's for damn sure. It's sad. And horribly apathetic.

"Picking shrimp not such a simple choice anymore"

Farm-raised, wild, imported: Each has price, health, environmental considerations

By MERIDITH FORD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 07/10/08

Bubba: "Anyway, like I was sayin,' shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, shrimp-kebabs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan-fried, deep-fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That - that's about it."

- from "Forrest Gump"

Chris Hunt/AJC
(ENLARGE)
Wild-caught shrimp seem the better choice when it comes to taste and texture.

Becky Stein / Special
Jumbo BBQ Shrimp. See the link to Recipes below.

WANT MORE INFO?
Check out these sites:
. www.wildgeorgiashrimp.com
. www.monterey bayaquarium.com

RELATED:
. Recipes: Jumbo BBQ Shrimp, Chipotle Shrimp, more
. Photos: Butterflying shrimp made easy


Even the largest are only a couple of inches long, but they pack a big punch in the flavor department. When cooked, they're so pink that they have their very own color: shrimp.

Warm weather brings shrimp to restaurant menus, dinner tables and backyard barbecues as a rite of spring and summer, when these ocean creepy crawlers are in season.

But do you know where that perfectly pink pillow of flavor on your plate came from?

Shrimp - like so many other foods from our oceans - come to our markets at a high price, and not just the kind that affects our wallets.

Much of the shrimp we eat at restaurants or buy in supermarkets has been farm-raised in Southeast Asia, in a stagnant pool pumped with fungicides, algicides and pesticides, as well as antibiotics to prevent the spread of viruses. Mangrove forests by the hectare have been leveled to cater to shrimp farming, a lucrative trade too alluring for local economies to pass up. The forests are delicate ecosystems that shelter coastlines from tropical storms and nurse young fish and other species, as well as provide livelihoods and culture for the people who live near them.

After farming, the shrimp are frozen, then sent to markets all over the globe. Since many viruses can survive the freezing process, companies pump the shrimp with antibiotics. One antibiotic, chloramphenicol, is outlawed in the United States because it can cause human aplastic anemia, a deadly blood disorder. But it can still show up in our imported shrimp, according to the watchdog Web site foodandwaterwatch.org, because the United States doesn't employ a "rigorous" inspection program for imported shrimp. Even with required country-of-origin labels in today's markets, we still don't know for sure how these shrimp were farmed.

How did this whole process get started anyway? Why would we want to contribute to such a muddied food chain? With shrimp, it's all about the Benjamins: Imported farmed shrimp are cheaper and therefore very appealing to the American market.

"Cheap food has a very steep price," said Damon Lee Fowler, a cookbook author, food writer and James Beard Award nominee. "Maybe not at the supermarket, but down the line."

Fowler's latest cookbook, "The Savannah Cookbook" (Gibbs Smith, $29.95), calls for only wild-caught shrimp in his recipes.

"I don't want imported. The way they are farmed is irresponsible, and they've been pumped with sulfites and God knows what else," he said. "Plus, they are inferior in taste and texture."

Fowler loves to use Atlantic Coast brown shrimp, in season from June through August in Georgia, because of their sweetness. Georgia's white shrimp season runs from around mid-April to mid-June. Though they are a different species, brown and white shrimp are highly prized because of their sweet flavor and tender texture.

And for the most part, wild-caught shrimp do seem the better choice, especially for taste and texture. According to a recent Texas A&M report, wild shrimp have characteristic flavor caused by a group of naturally occurring chemicals, bromophenols, that can only be found in saltwater seafood. Bottom dwellers, such as shrimp, have higher concentrations of the flavor-enhancing stuff.

Wild-caught advocate groups such as the Wild Georgia Shrimp Association and Wild American Shrimp Inc. have pushed major marketing campaigns in recent years to inform the public of the dangers of imported farm-raised shrimp and increase awareness of the plight of the American shrimper, a group whose numbers are dwindling because of the high cost of fuel vs. the low cost of imports. The group requires certification, so that a label of "certified wild American shrimp" means high quality.

"We managed in four years to get the price of our shrimp raised from $1 a pound to $2.50, but fuel costs have gone from $1 to $4.50, so it's as if we've done nothing," said John Wallace, a shrimper for 30 years who also serves as president and program director of the Wild Georgia Shrimp Association. Wallace has watched as 50 percent to 60 percent of the shrimpers he knows have left to "go get a job on the hill," a euphemism used to mean dry-land employment. "The industry is in worse shape than ever."

So the best thing is to buy and eat wild-caught shrimp? It tastes better, though higher in price, and helps sustain local economies, right? Yes and yes. Easy peasy.

Not so fast: Wild-caught shrimpers still employ the use of trawls, a method that uses a cone-shaped net that's towed behind the boat. Chains weigh the mouth of the net to stir up the ocean floor and catch as many critters as possible, often many that weren't invited, such as endangered sea turtles and other fish, known as "bycatch." Dragging the net, often by methods such as rockhopping (tires are used to roll over the ocean floor more easily) and otter trawling, rips up the sea bottom, and the ecosystem doesn't have time to rebound before trawls come back as soon as two years later.

Some shrimpers in the United States are required to use BRDs (bycatch reduction devices); all shrimpers are required to use TEDs (turtle excluder devices). Wallace says Georgia requires that TEDs on shrimp boats be 98 percent effective. "Trawling doesn't plow up the bottom the way people assume," he said.

But an organization called globalchefs.com disagrees, stating that a better alternative is wild-caught shrimp fished from traps. Traps can entangle marine mammals, though, and Wallace says that though he's heard this method is effective in the Pacific Northwest, Georgia shrimpers "can't catch shrimp that way."

And U.S. shrimp farming hasn't proved cost-effective, though methods here are more environmentally sound.

So what's a shrimp lover to do? Does this mean you shouldn't eat shrimp at all? Of course not. It means that shrimp are special - perhaps you just didn't realize how special. It would be ridiculous to assume that global populations will simply stop eating shrimp. But for now, the best way for us to enjoy them is by saving them for occasions where they can be center stage. And understanding the price tag once they've gotten to the table. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it comes to shrimp.

BUYING THE BEST SHRIMP

Can't tell heads from tails? Here's a guide to help you choose the best shrimp:

WILD-CAUGHT AMERICAN SHRIMP
. Pros: The best flavor, far superior to farmed. Helps local economies and promotes sustainable fishing practices. Trap-caught is the best bet.
. Cons: The most expensive of the lot. Shrimp boats still use trawl nets, which rip up the ocean floor and are bad for the ecosystem.

FARM-RAISED IN THE UNITED STATES
. Pros: Free of antibiotics and other chemicals. Less expensive than wild-caught. Promotes sustainability through the use of natural wetlands.
. Cons: Energy costs for maintaining farms are very high. Practice not widely successful in the United States, which makes the product hard to find.

FARM-RAISED IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
. Pros: Very inexpensive.
. Cons: Chemicals and antibiotics are used. Shrimp are frozen for shipping and kept frozen for longer periods than wild-caught. Flavor and texture are inferior to wild-caught. Destroys local ecosystems and economies by clearing mangrove forests and disturbing wetlands.

http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/food/stories/2008/07/08/guide_to_choosing_shrimp.html

Because of my 27 years in the natural foods business Peter and his shrimp farming partners consulted with me to try to figure out how to market their product. Almost by accident it turned out they were producing in a completely natural, organic manner. Their goal was a superior shrimp. Turns out eco-farm practices are what created that product.

Peter and his team promoted their shrimp at national natural food trade shows, local distributor meetings, even the Arkansas Hospitality show to great raves.

We tried to get folks to understand that this was the "filet mignon" of shrimp that was worth more than the tasteless shrimp rings and other mass produced junk that was out there.

Why folks couldn't or wouldn't spend the money on such a superior product when they'll drop large cash on better steaks remains a mystery to me. But even the mighty Whole Foods wouldn't bite. It was easier for them to buy imported shrimp with a suspect organic label from Thailand than support local farmers. I understand John Mackey and Whole Foods have since rethought some of those practices, but it's too late for Brave New Shrimp.

As for the local distributor who said they couldn't get enough product, I have to call BS. I know for a fact there was plenty of product warehoused when the shrimp was discontinued. I also know Terry's Finer Foods, Hardin's Market and other specialty markets were consistently selling this shrimp. But it takes some big fish to make it worth producing and the big fish didn't bite.
What a loss.

Just because there was plenty of shrimp when they ceased operations doesn't mean it was available almost two years ago when they got dropped by the distributor.
I'd also like to note places like Terry's and Hardin's are not known for their high-volume sales. If the enterprise couldn't keep up with the demand from a local branch of a national food distributor, then why would Whole Foods be interested in taking on an unproven, small-scale operation?

I'm not knocking Peter or his shrimp -- I was one of the first reporters doing a story about it when he got started -- but there's more at play here than just simply a lack of desire on the part of the consumer. I think there were mistakes made on Brave New's end that are not being owned up to, and people who love Peter the chef are more than willing to not look beyond business realities and just canonize him as the latest casualty of an apathetic consumer culture.

I'm just pointing out that there was demand there they couldn't meet, and when they could meet it, the ship had sailed. That's not the consumer's fault -- that's the business owner's.

JG,

I'm just curious- when you say, "I'm just pointing out that there was demand there they couldn't meet," and then you contend, "but there's more at play here than just simply a lack of desire on the part of the consumer," how does that all shake out? Where was all this demand "they couldn't meet" coming from? Those statements are just a bit confusing in relation to one another.

For a city that ranks as the #7th most obese in the country, and within the Top Ten of fast food consumed in the country, I think consumer apathy is obviously a problem here. A big problem.

And I'll reiterate that I think it's distressing that people continue to make these choices when there are so many alternatives and plenty of resources to educate themselves on what food is best for the body AND the environment.

I also don't think anyone is intending to cast Mr. Brave in the role of the victim.

I'm sorry if I was unclear, but the contention by Brave is that there weren't enough people interested in buying his shrimp because of the price. My point was he got dropped by the food distributor (I want to say it was Ben E. Keith, but it sould have been Sysco or PFG) because they couldn't produce enough shrimp to keep the distributor consistently stocked. That shows there was a consumer demand that wasn't met. The chef I know who wasn't able to obtain it -- who is my husband, in the interest of full disclosure -- was executive chef at the Lodge at Mount Magazine at the time. During their peak season in the fall, they served 7,000 meals in a month. I don't know what the exact percentage of those meals contained shrimp, but there had to be quite a few. My husband admires and respects Peter and wanted to serve his product. But he couldn't get it. That's a problem not on the consumer end, but on the producer end. To say that people would rather buy cheaper product is not the whole story. There were those who wanted his product but couldn't get it, so they were forced to go somewhere else. Not a recipe for longevity.

And he's not bing portrayed as a victim? From the original post: "And 'gave it his all', he certainly did." But did the he really? Did his partners? Or did they have a great idea they didn't know how to manage very well? And let's face it -- we probably wouldn't even be talking about this except that Peter Brave's name is attached to it, just like there would be much wailing and ganshing of teeth if Scott McGehee's organic farm went under. But there's not weekly mention of the local farmer who lost his farm or had to sell out because economic times are tough.

And to address your other point: it's not necessarily consumer apathy that drives people to buy lower-cost food. A lot of it has to do with economics. When the average income in this state is $36,000, there are good many people who can't afford to pay for organic vegetables and horomone-free meat in the grocery stores, and the last time I checked, the farmers market doesn't take food stamps. The reality is, being environmentally conscious and worrying about chemicals and antibiotics in food is a luxury. Would most people rather have their food fresh from the organic farm and their meat freshly slaughtered? If price was not a consideration, then yes, undoubtedly. But when you have two kids to feed and you're a chicken catcher at Tyson, if the only way to put gas in the car is to eat off the dollar menu at McDonald's, then that's what's going to happen. The sad fact is in this day and age, it takes time and money to cook healthy meals, two things some people don't have. The problem is systemic, and people who look down their noses and claim these folks just want "instant gratification" without any empathy for individual circumstances isn't going to win over any converts from the masses.

Here's a case in point: my chef husband, who knows all about good food, recently went to the store and stocked up on cheap ground beef, macaroni and cheese, ramen and other low-cost foods that made me cringe hearing about it. Why? Because he's at culinary school in Arizona, which means we have double the living expenses and half the income. Add a baby on the way, and money is very tight in the Ginocchio household. Some sacrifices have to be made. When money's better, yes, we will be buying better food, but thank God for the availability of the cheap stuff.

With all the concern about freshess and local, why can't I find any Arkansas wines in our locally owned restaurants? The lack of support for our wine producers by the Arkansas Hospitality industry and the Ar Dept of Agriculture is disgracefull.

JG,

Point taken. And well addressed, might I add.

And please don't think that I haven't considered the massive role the economy plays in people's lives. Of COURSE that is a major consideration. It's overwhelming everyone. We're in a horrible finincial sitaution as a country and you would have to be blind to think otherwise. The worst is yet to come.

I spend so much money on gas just to get to and from work per week, that I barely drive my car on the weekend unless I absolutely have to.

But on the flip side, I just bought over a lb of organic, hormone-free chicken thighs from Kroger just the other day for under 5 bucks. Add some rice, orzo or couscous (all available in bulk at inexpensive prices), some fresh veggies, etc, and I think you can afford to eat in a fairly healthy fashion.

I also know people are pressed for time. Esp. when they have children. My parents worked their asses off when they raised my brother, my sister and myself. My Dad averaged 70-80 hours per week; my Mom was close to 50. We still had major limits on how much fast food we were exposed to and I thank my lucky stars that I never really developed a taste for it. We all pitched in as a family as best we could and sat down for dinner at the table as much as we could. And ate pretty healthy food considering the constraints on my parent's time.

I don't know. I just think if something matters, you make it work. I know that organic, free range, etc food comes at a premium, but there are still alternatives. There are always alternatives to fast food.

And for the record, I think local AR wines are a disgrace to the industry of wine. They taste so horrible, I don't know how they even begin to qualify as "wine."

There are some things local Arkansas farmers do very well in the food industry. But the business of growing grapes belongs where they already do it best in the States: on the west coast.

Blech. AR wines are a joke.

My bad on the spelling mistakes and to MysteryShopper, that should answer your question about why so few local wines are represented in local restaurants. Most distributors aren't very interested and for good reason.

This site could really use a food forum!

There is really no good place to put this but here it goes. I ate at McClard's the other day...what the hell is all the fuss about? It's been featured on the food network and touted as some of the best BBQ you'll ever sink your teeth into. Any number of Little Rock BBQ joints can beat it hands down. Sim's ribs and sauce run circles around the place and they have an awesome jukebox to boot. Sorry, but very unimpressed.

Does anyone remember Brother's BBQ in Heber Springs? That was good BBQ. I may have people wanting to string me up for dissing this place but I just don't get "love" for what I thought was greasy, run of the mill BBQ??? Anyone?

Couldn't agree more, FoodDude.

One more word from me since I was involved with Brave New Shrimp from the get go. Peter did give it his all. I won't name names, but his fish farmer partners, who have been in that business for decades are the ones who dropped the ball. If you're going to blame any of the owners of Brave New Shrimp, blame them. Peter was a minority owner, but the quality control specialist. He accomplished his mission in a superb manner.
As for talking about the high price, again, folks buy the high dollar meat cuts every single day. I see lobsters selling too. And I'm still telling you, if the distributor told you two years ago they couldn't get the shrimp, they lied.

FoodDude, I agree that McLard's is shitty. What's even worse than the BBQ is the Gawdawful tamales. The tamales look just like dog turds, and I'd bet they taste about the same. Dog turds couldn't be that much crappier.

Craig's in DeVall's Bluff deserves their well-smoked reputation. Craig's sauce too.

I don't know how McLard's got to be so highly regarded.

On topic, sorry to hear about Brave New Shrimp going under, but all this blaming and finger pointing reminds me of funerals in my family.

I've always thought McClard's was overrated (though Bill McClard was a heckuva placekicker for the Hogs many years ago). HB's Barbecue on Lancaster in Little Rock is a direct descendant of the original Shack of blessed memory, and it shows.

Sorry to get off-topic, but discussion of food in Arkansas always returns to talk of barbecue.

I believe that way I put it once, "HB's made me believe in barbecue again after years of mediocrity."

Many thanks to my old boss for dragging me out there so I could discover it.