The Crustacean Chronicles
The 'Dis-Taste' in Our Shrimps
ANY given Friday afternoon, one can find Ch'ng Teoh Chew at his stall in the Batu Lanchang pasar, a wet market right smack in the heart of Jelutong, a suburb of George Town.
Unlike most markets, the Batu Lanchang pasar operates from 1pm and at 3pm, the place was already bustling with shoppers stocking up on fresh groceries for the weekend ahead.
The market is popular with Penangites browsing for bargains among its over 200 stalls selling everything from vegetables and meat to seafood like shrimps and prawns.
However, for the fishmonger Ch'ng, there is one thing that he would not sell at his stall: farmed shrimps.
"I once had a bad experience.
"I bought some to try out the taste but the next day, they hardened.
"I don't know about antibiotics but I just prefer selling wild ones," said the sprightly 73-year-old, who has been selling seafood for over 40 years.
Ch'ng only sells shrimps caught from the sea off the island's coast. The shrimps from his stall looked delectably pinkish, even orange in colour.
It’s not just the colour.
Wild shrimps, according to canteen operator Hamid Ibrahim, who was picking out his seafood at a nearby stall, “tastes 100% like how shrimps should taste”.
“Farmed ones will taste - maybe 20%.”
Despite Penang being an island, over half of its seafood in 2014 came from aquaculture farms, found mostly along the Balik Pulau coast in the west.
Due to the nature of aquaculture farms where large number of animals are kept in small spaces, the livestock is prone to diseases.
Malaysians tend to generally use prawns when they mean shrimps for their cooking. Shrimps usually cannot grow beyond 15cm to 20 cm while prawns can grow up to 30cm in the wild.
A worker at a large shrimp farm in Kedah, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said about 10 years ago, a strange disease hit the shrimps.
"We called it the Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS).
Read more: Shrimp industry hit by EMS disease
"In just 30 days, nearly all of the shrimps died after being put in the growing ponds," he said, adding that farmed shrimps would usually take 70 to 100 days to reach harvestable sizes.
Farmers, he said, tried many types of medication but these all failed and so, they resorted to nitrofurans and chloramphenicol.
Malaysians are unknowingly consuming tainted shrimps which contain antibiotics - nitrofurans and chloramphenicol - that can lead to serious health issues.
And some of these shrimps — tiger prawns and Pacific whiteleg shrimps - can be commonly found for sale at most wet markets in Malaysia, including the one in Batu Lanchang.
Consumer groups have warned for years the consequences of digesting such substances with our seafood but the public health issue continues to persist even now.
Read more: ‘Check if prawns are safe’
Experts believe that residues from these two antibiotics are carcinogenic.
In the case of chloramphenicol, it also leads to a rare but serious side effect of bone marrow failure, leading to the lack of production in red and white blood cells and platelets.
Since this year, many Malaysian shrimp exporters have been put on the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) red list after samples of 18 shipments from 11 Malaysian exporters were detected to contain chloramphenicol.
Between 2009 and 2018, the USFDA also put 28 Malaysian shrimp exporters on its red list because 56 shipment samples contained nitrofurans.
Penang has the highest number of such exporters.
Out of 28 Malaysian exporters red-listed by the USFDA for trying to send in shrimps containing nitrofurans, 19 are based in Penang.
Out of 11 that tried to export chloramphenicol-tainted shrimps, eight have Penang addresses.
The rest are in Perak, Selangor, Kedah and Sarawak.
Watch: How shrimps are farmed
USFDA media officer Peter Cassell explained that "when a product gets to the point of detention without physical examination (DWPE), the company is notified and they will also be notified of their options".
In an e-mail to queries from The Star, Cassell pointed to USFDA import guidelines showing that a DWPE alert allows its field officers to summarily detain such shipments.
The companies then have 10 to 20 days to show laboratory proof that their specific shipments do not violate FDA laws.
If they fail to do so, the shipments must be destroyed or exported out of the US in 90 days from the day of detention.
USFDA publishes its DWPE alerts online as Import Alert 16-129 for nitrofurans and 16-127 for chloramphenicol.
The names and addresses of every exporter on the red lists are published.
A check on USFDA Import Alerts confirmed that the worker's shrimp farming and export company was not listed.
"We use probiotics and maintain a high level of cleanliness. Not all shrimp farmers use them," he said.
Deputy Agriculture and Agro-based Minister Sim Tze Tzin blamed Malaysia being red-listed on producers of antibiotic-tainted shrimp from other countries suspected of using Malaysia as a transit hub.
He said these Malaysian exporters could have been engaging in trans-shipment activities.
"Based on past cases, we believe that they imported frozen shrimp from other countries and re-exported them to the US.
"We have tightened our monitoring since then," he said.
Any shrimp farm intending to export their harvest must be registered with Fisheries Department, warned Sim.
The department's Biosecurity Division also regularly took shrimp samples from these farms to test for antibiotics as well as heavy metals, hormones and dyes, he said.
"If the samples contain banned antibiotics, the farms will be sanctioned and their harvests will not be allowed to be exported.
"Since the beginning of this year, the Fisheries Department is fully in charge of releasing the Certificate of Origin (COO).
"If antibiotics are found, we won't issue the COO, and the Health Ministry then will not issue the health certificates needed for export clearance.
"Previously, the COO was issued by the Chambers of Commerce and Industry under the supervision of theInternational Trade and Industry Ministry," Sim said.
Malaysia's biosecurity capabilities, he said, could now track shrimps from specific farms to the processing factories.
"We are able to know which shrimp farms are being unscrupulous and prevent them from exporting, which will be a serious economic blow," he assured.
While shrimps for the export market comes under extra scrutiny, little can be done however for those sold in the domestic market.
For consumers like Dr P. Anita, 40, it doesn't hurt to be extra careful.
"It is easy to tell them apart. Wild shrimp are pink or pale and vary in sizes. Farmed ones are grey and are usually the same size. "
See: Swipe left for farmed shrimps and right for wild shrimps
"Knowing that eating antibiotics in my shrimps is a serious health hazard changes the way I look at seafood and buying farmed seafood.
"But I also know the sea is polluted and it is equally bad now to consume any form of seafood," she said.
