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U.S.
shrimp develop regional "personalities" in
new marketing effort
As cheap foreign imports flood
the market, U.S. shrimpers are fighting back
with a new marketing strategy: Give the shrimp
a personality.
Taking a page from the salmon
and coffee industries, which have succeeded
in making wild ALaskan salmon fashionable
and creating a market for expensive coffee
from places such as Kenya, domestic shrimpers
are trying to persuade consumers to buy American.
Some restaurants already are
taking up the cause. At Lark in Seattle,
diners can read on the menu whether the prawns
come from Georgia, Florida or Alaska. Other
places get even more specific about the home
address of their crustaceans. The Silverado
Resort and Spa in Napa, CA, now serves "local
West Texas white shrimp." They have a "very
sweet taste profile, without any iodine-y
aftertaste like you taste in a lot of shrimps,"
executive chef Peter Pahk says.
Individual states are getting
in on the act as well. Shrimp from Florida
has "characteristic Florida flavor," says
a Web site sponsored by the state's Department
of Agriculture, which kicked off its own
marketing campaign in May. So far, 2,300
supermarkets in 15 states have purchased
and promoted what the state has dubbed "Wild
and Wonderful Florida Shrimp," a spokesman
for the Bureau of Seafood and Aquaculture
Marketing says.
Such efforts are highly important
to U.S. shrimpers, who this year are receiving
41 percent less for their product than they
did in 2000 because of a 70 percent rise
in shrimp imports, says the Southern Shrimp
Alliance, an industry trade group. American
producers say foreign shrimp is being dumped
on the American market at artificially low
prices.
Late last month, the Bush administration
sided with American shrimpers by proposing
to impose tariffs of as much as 67 percent
on shrimp imports from Brazil, Thailand,
Ecuador and India. In early July, even higher
tariffs were proposed for shrimp from China
and Vietnam.
Shrimp is the most popular
seafood in the United States, having surpassed
even tuna in per capita consumption during
recent years.
2004 Copyright Wall Street
Journal
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