In the past decade, marine shrimp has been an important agricultural export product of Thailand. The major markets for the shrimp are the United States of America, Japan, Europe and Canada. These importing countries have standard criteria for the whole production line, including processing, for consumer safety for imported marine shrimp products.

The Thailand marine shrimp culture industry has encountered production and marketing problems in exporting marine shrimp in the world market. The Department of Fisheries (DOF) has improved the entire production line to meet an acceptable standard. In order to improve the shrimp production, guidelines for the whole production line from hatchery, farm rearing through processing and to finally to the consumer, namely from farm to table. DOF, the main government agency responsible for marine shrimp industry development has solved the problem of creating a sustainable industry and has developed an environmental management program known as the Code of Conduct (CoC) for the marine shrimp industry.

The CoC has began in 1998 with assistance of the World Bank who provided a consulting company to work with DOF in developing consultation meetings and workshops with operators and outlined the CoC for the Thailand marine shrimp industry. Three components contained in the outline are: 1) operational guideline and manual; 2) certification process for all operators; and 3) market incentives which is value added to the shrimp produced under the CoC guideline.

Quality shrimp production programmes have been developed for all components of shrimp rearing from farm to exporter. All processes must be examined by DOF auditors and the exporter must request for a certificate as specified in DOF regulation. The guidelines are divided into two sections:

Section I is a guideline for shrimp farming developed in accordance with CoC for Responsible Fishery, Article 9 of FAO guideline, Aquaculture and ISO14001 or Environmental Management System (EMS). This CoC for shrimp farm was developed in 1998.

Section II is a guideline for the end of the production line, namely the buyer, seller and processing plant. However a standard of fishery products for Thailand processing plant had been developed since 1990 in order to comply with international standard of CODEX and health and safety standard of importing countries. The development of CoC for this end process is to provide additional guidelines for shrimp harvest and transportation from farm to processing plant, which is a guideline that buyer and seller must be responsible for and traceable. DOF developed the CoC guideline from two sanitary fishery production standards, which are international standards.

Overall CoC guidelines for the Thailand sustainable marine shrimp industry have been developed by integrating existing DOF fishery processing standards in accordance with CODEX. CoC shrimp harvest and transportation and CoC shrimp farming guidelines are newly developed in accordance to CODEX, ISO14001/(EMS) and CoC of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).