In a 40-degree warehouse near the Opa-locka Airport, dozens of bundled-up workers forklift boxes of food destined for restaurants and hotels in 38 countries.
In a normal year, the workers unload more than 1 million pounds of shrimp. But since the Deepwater Horizon spill started gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Miami-based Performance Foodservice-Empire has dealt with increasing amounts of farm-raised shrimp from overseas and less freshwater shrimp from the Gulf. Prior to the spill, farm-raised shrimp made up 5 percent of its business, while wild shrimp made up 1 percent. Now, that 1 percent is shrinking.
"The customer needs something to put on their plate, so it's coming from other sources,'' said Luis A. Parga, president of Performance Foodservice-Empire, formerly known as Empire Seafood. Today it is part of Performance Food Group, the third largest food distributor in the United States, according to Technomic's 2008 Power Distributors list.
Other seafood distributors are facing a similar shift. As docks along the Louisiana coast close, Gulf shrimp processors said they are seeing a quarter of the shrimp they did this time last year. That forces distributors such as Performance to buy from overseas processors in countries such as Indonesia, Ecuador and Thailand. Performance's competitors, such as Sysco Corp. and U.S. Foodservice, are also finding less Gulf shrimp available.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Miami Herald.
