Brazil reopens market to Argentinian shrimp

A Brazilian court suspended the protective measure that blocked the entry of Argentine shrimps into the country.

The embargo had been filed in October 2013 with the support of the Brazilian Association of Shrimp Breeders. At the time, the association backed the alleged hypothesis of health risk and consumer health.

The current judicial measure is based on several scientific articles that show that Argentina’s shrimp exports do not represent a real and effective risk for Brazil.

In January of this year, a decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil granted Ecuador the possibility of re-exporting its traditional shrimp to the country.

Shrimp imports and exports

A Datamar study, based on the Dataliner data, shows that frozen shrimp imports were low over the last few decades, reaching only US$15m since 1997. Imports were mainly from France, Argentina, and Ecuador.

During this period (1997 to 2019), foreign trade operations involving shrimp in Brazil corresponded to 0.47% in imports versus 99.53% in exports.

According to Dataliner, considering volumes since 1997, the largest volume imported was in 2003, at 99,000 tons. Brazil practically hasn’t imported any shrimp since 2011.  It is worth noting that shrimp exports are seasonal, with temporary bans on fishing imposed in order to make it sustainable. According to IBAMA’s regulation 189/08, the stoppage season for shrimp fishing is between April 1 – May 31.

The following NCMs (Mercosur Common Nomenclature) were considered in this study: frozen shrimps; frozen krill shrimp; frozen whole shrimps other than “krill” (main), other frozen shrimps other than “krill”, frozen whole cold water shrimps (pandalus spp.);cold water shrimps other than whole, frozen; other frozen whole shrimps; other shrimps other than whole, frozen; not frozen shrimps, other not frozen shrimps; other live shrimps, fresh or refrigerated and shrimps in general.

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