New Delhi, Aug. 28 -- Indian marine farms, key suppliers of shrimp to the US, are subjected to several safety standards, traceability norms and global protocols, some introduced in the past two years, government officials and exporters said on Wednesday in response to American health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's charge that South Asian seafood was contaminated. Kennedy Jr, a Trump cabinet member, made the comments Tuesday during a televised Cabinet meeting at the White House, accusing South Asian nations of "dumping shrimp" sold at Walmart, a US supermarket chain. India is a major exporter of shrimps to the US accounting for 40% of domestic seafood consumption, and is bracing for the impact of an effective tariff rate of 50% imposed by Trump. A levy of 25% took effect on August 1 and another 25% kicked in on Wednesday. US importers shifted to India, especially around mid-2015, after a global scandal erupted in the Thai seafood industry over modern-day slavery allegations involving fishers. In FY25, total seafood exports from India globally stood at $7.4 billion, with the US market accounting for 40%. Trump's 50% import tax on India is over and above an existing 7% tax on Indian shrimp that the US levies as countervailing duty to balance out subsidies given to Indian shrimp farmers, said NM Prasad of the Seafood Exporters Association of India. The world's second-largest fish producer aims to ramp up exports globally, following the boost it had got from the Thai scandal. "A series of stringent protocols apply to our products. The US allegation is not based on facts," an official of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) said, requesting anonymity because he is not authorised to speak publicly. MPEDA conducted trials for turtle excluder devices so that they aren't harmed, officials said....