Highlights from the AP's reporting on the shrimp industry in India

abcnews.go.com:

India is the top supplier of shrimp to the U.S., with Indian shrimp stocked in freezers at most of the nation’s biggest grocery store and restaurant chains

SAN FRANCISCO — India is the top supplier of shrimp to the U.S., with Indian shrimp stocked in freezers at most of the nation’s biggest grocery store and restaurant chains.

One reason for that is the low cost for consumers of shrimp from India. But that low cost comes at a price.

The Associated Press traveled in February to the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeast India to document working conditions in the booming industry, after obtaining an advance copy of an investigation released Wednesday by the Chicago-based Corporate Accountability Lab, a human rights legal group, that found workers face “dangerous and abusive conditions.”

Here are highlights from the AP’s reporting and the CAL report:

Americans eat more than 5 pounds of shrimp per person per year, making it the leading seafood consumed in the country. Most American consumers would rather buy U.S.-produced food. But with only 5% of shrimp sold in the country caught in the U.S., local shrimp can be harder to locate and considerably more costly.

In the 1970s, the U.S. led the world in shrimp production. Then, shrimp was considered a delicacy. Diners were served expensive shrimp cocktails with less than a dozen shellfish. Over the next two decades, the use of inexpensive shrimp-farming technologies soared in Asia, and imports flooded the market.

India became America’s leading shrimp supplier in part because media reports including an AP investigation exposed modern day slavery in the Thai seafood industry. AP’s 2015 reporting led to the freedom of some 2,000 enslaved fishermen and prompted calls for bans of Thai