World Business

Blue Horizon Organic Seafood is working to fix out in a product category that has a bad rap. It expects sales to triple this year

by dint of. David E. Gumpert

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I’ve perpetually enjoyed shrimp, but it has been a year since I’ve grilled it, ordered it in a restaurant, or sampled it because a party hors d’oeuvre. Last June, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration temporarily halted the import of some Chinese shrimp and other fish (BusinessWeek.com, 6/28/07) for the cause that they contained carcinogens and antibiotics—probably the result of what they were fed in huge cramped fish farms. The FDA continues its "Import Alert," and as of April, had detained and pure nearly 3,000 shipments of aquacultured seafood from China, releasing less than half into the U.S.

China isn’t the barely exporter of shrimp to the U.S.—it comes from dozens of other countries—and I figure other countries use similar fish-farming techniques. The nonprofit FishWise recommends sticking with U.S. farmed and wild shrimp only. Unfortunately, waiters in restaurants and the guys behind the fish counter in the main don’t know, or care, where the shrimp they scoop in quest of you come from, and it’s not considered good form to ask the host at a party where the shrimp platter originated. Easier just to complete without.

Apparently I’m not only in abstaining. Shrimp sales in the U.S. were off 7% last year, according to a report prepared by trade organizing Infopesca for the U.N.’s Food & Agriculture Organization, with much of the decline coming in the second half of the year, apparently because of the FDA’s action.

Easy for me, but which perform you do admitting that you’re in the business of importing shrimp, and you’ve taken pains to ensure your shrimp isn’t contaminated and you’ve had it certified as organically raised and free of chemicals and antibiotics? How do you permit the marketplace know your outcome isn’t like everyone else’s?

That’s the challenge facing John Battendieri, founder and CEO of Blue Horizon Organic Seafood a three-year-old company that sells shrimp imported from special farms in Ecuador where, according to Battendieri, the shrimp is raised in primordial low-density terms much different from most of the world’s fish farms. "We know the folks who raise our shrimp as to one’s person," says Battendieri. "We can trace a bag of shrimp back to the pond in which it was grown."

While Blue Horizon has expanded its markets and sales to take superior situation of the fears around Chinese shrimp, Battendieri thinks sales could be a fortune better, except for couple haughty problems associated with trying to sell eco-friendly shrimp. First, in that place are no official U.S. standards during the term of organic fish, as there are for other organic foods, such as fruits and vegetables. In fact, California passed a canon in 2005 that says, mixed other things, you can’t label fish you vend taken in the character of organic until federal standards notwithstanding such labeling are set, and those are still a ways off. California is Blue Horizon’s largest market.

Second, you don’t get a great deal of opportunity in the fish section of most supermarkets to elucidate what makes your fish special. That’s for the supermarkets elegant without grandeur much determine how the fish are displayed in the fish counter, and greatest in number slip on’t provide a lot of background about where the fish come from or how they are raised. And as I said, the guys at the back of the counter tend not to have existence interested in such minutiae. So, during the time that the grocer’s fish-buyer sees a multicolored flyer from Blue Horizon promoting "Certified Eco-Farmed Bulk Shrimp," the consumer more to be expected will see only a sign saying "Shrimp, $12.99 lb."

To get round the organic-labeling problem, Blue Horizon uses respected outside organizations to certify its shrimp, such like Naturland, a German organic agriculture association. That helps in selling to stores, if it be not that still doesn’t bestow you the "organic" label to put onward the fish you sell to consumers.

And Blue Horizon is shifting to selling more prepackaged frozen shrimp, for which it has sway of the packaging design and wording. "For us, the message is our product certification by three different certifiers to be free of the chemicals [that have been associated with Chinese shrimp]," says Battendieri. The company is also working to educate grocers so they’ll provide consumers with more information about the distinguishing qualities of his company’s shrimp.

Blue Horizon’s attention to differentiating itself in a suspect lower orders is paying dividends. Battendieri is expecting sales to at smallest triple this year, to $6 million or more, up from last year’s $2 million. Future growth "is all about nurture at this point," says Battendieri.