- ‘We all need new breeding material, don’t we?’ -
Many shrimp lovers spend the weekend in Hannover (Germany) to visit the ‘2nd International Shrimp Championship’. While I have been attending this event in 2009 I decided against it this year. The reasons letting me staying at home were mostly deficits in the planning and performance of this show that was not so international at all. Some facts to think about:
- English information came out on January 16th on the contest website; less than 4 weeks before which is really late. The registration form was not translated to English at all. Meanwhile I had been contacted by shrimp keepers from Sweden, Hungary and other countries already who wanted to participate in the event or visit the Hannover fair. They had written two or three emails to the organizer but none was answered. The organizing team gave the impression, the new competitors where neither that much nor particularly so important.
- The recommendation of shipping the shrimps without papers but declared as a gift seems questionable to me (‘Participants from outside Germany please note on the box without fail that the shipment does not contain protected species and that it contains gift parcels, not commodities.’)
- Information in Germany was spread in garnelenforum.de only. No announcements in crustawelt.de, wirbellose.net or other (international) boards like shrimpnow.com. The whole schedule was fixed on January 26th and some tanks out of 200 were still unoccupied then, due to the lack of registrations. Funny, since some breeders had been invited participating in person by the organizer.
- The five judges remained unknown until now, but were said to be from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Taiwan and Japan. They were free to participate in any category with their own shrimps they did not judge. Why was there no general prohibition for them to attend with own shrimps?
- The auction standards were astonishing, too: 100% of the auction benefits went to the organizer. A 30/70 percentage split (organizer/breeder) known from some betta clubs would be a fairer rule and encourage more people to participate.
- The participation for breeders giving their shrimps into the auction was also rewarded with a one year free membership in the ‘AK Wirbellose’ association (benefit =25 Euro). Furthermore, those breeders could receive a receipt (‘Sachspendenquittung’) for German fiscus. This information wasn’t shared on the contest website, but within garnelenforum.de, where several threads were opened maybe to push the event in search engines result.
In sum, a fair competition policy should not penalize Newbies or non-German-speakers.
Overall, one could have the dim feeling that participation from unknown foreign breeders really was not particular desired by the organizing team. Perhaps only few selected professional breeders of the old boys-network were appreciated guests? A separation of competitors in hobbiest’s and professional breeders would be a wise thing to do in the future. Hopefully, the ‘AK Wirbellose’ will check the final accounting in Sievershausen accurately and heed all the helpful suggestions from shrimp keepers around the world in 2011.
As the organizer declared recently, the English website will be updated soon.