The Demo Site

US - Amid the fishing villages of Chanthaburi Province, bracketed by the Gulf of Thailand and the Khao Soi Dao mountains, the inherently messy trade of shrimp farming is undergoing an environmental overhaul spearheaded by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The destruction of mangrove swamps and the pollution of natural waterways with waste from shrimp ponds has long drawn the ire of environmentalists, but in the past two years, Rubicon Resources LLC, a Los Angeles-based supplier of farmed shrimp to Wal-Mart, has bought and upgraded roughly 150 Thai shrimp farms. Among Rubicon's changes: increasing the testing and documentation of what is in its ponds, planting mangrove elsewhere to make up for the trees destroyed by its farms and standardizing treatment of the water discharged from its ponds.

Rubicon is pushing to meet a year-end deadline that all phases of shrimp production adhere to environmental and social standards backed by Wal-Mart, Red Lobster operator Darden Restaurants Inc. and other big buyers. The US-based industry group that drafted the standards, the Global Aquaculture Alliance, plans to unveil similar guidelines this year for farming of tilapia and catfish, with standards for salmon following later.Click here to continue a Full article

By: Kris Hudson and Wilawan Watcharasakwet - The Wall Street Journal Online