Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Shrimp Hunt in the Desert: Las Vegas consumes around 90 percent of all shrimp eaten in the world and most of it is imported from Southeast Asia and China. Until recently, that is, when a new fish farm in North Las Vegas debuted creating jobs and challenging foreign seafood supremacy for the first time.

New water recycling technologies now allow the shrimp farm to exist in the desert, closer to the Las Vegas restaurant chefs looking forward to using this fresh shrimp for their menus and eliminating the issue of having to inject the product with preservatives.

I knew that Vegas consumed a lot of Shrimp, but I didn't know it was this much.

Very interesting...if it's anything like farmed salmon...I'll pass...

I had farmed shrimp in Hawaii and it was fantastic.

I will be in LV in a week so I will just have to check out the shrimp market. 90%??? That town must be crawling with shrimp.

Mary

Yes, their little eye stalks wriggling this way and that, their little legs skittering around the slot machines, their tails held high over their backs. Sorry, no synchronized swimming to Disney tunes. Also, there's a move to outlaw drawn butter, lemon juice and tartar sauce.

Sorry, but I have to be skeptical of that statistic. Although, I'd be interested to taste farm-raised shrimp.

Amy

I also find it hard to believe that LV consumes 90% of all the world's shrimp. I doubt that even one country does this!

All,

Acutually, a lot of the shrimp you eat today is farmed. Probably most of it. What's unusual about doing it in Vegas is that most shrimp farms are on the coast, so that they can use fresh seawater to circulate through the tanks.

Shrimp consumption in Las Vegas is more than 60,000 pounds a day — higher than the rest of the country combined!

I googled and this is what came up.

In 2000, worldwide shrimp production was 4,168,400 tons (here), or about 2.3 MILLION lbs/day. 60,000 lbs would be about 0.3% of that. Now I know the 60000 number and the 4M+ tonnes number are likely from different years, but shrimp production has been rocketing up since 2000, so the situation is likely even less for LV. In any case, the 0.3% number is likely in the right ballpark.

I will say that 0.3% is still very impressive for one small city, especially considering the rate at which many Asians consume shrimp.