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Finding Solutions: Louisiana’s Leadership in Disclosure Requirements Helps to Ensure Customers Are Being Served Authentic Wild Gulf Shrimp

As thousands of tourists prepare to descend on New Orleans for the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, SEAD Consulting reports 13% of sampled New Orleans restaurants falsely imply they serve Louisiana’s finest shrimp when they are actually using farm-raised imported shrimp. Of the 24 randomly selected seafood restaurants explicitly advertising their shrimp as “Gulf” or “authentic” tested in New Orleans, three restaurants served farm-raised imports instead.

The findings come as Louisiana institutes enhancements to its law that impose significant penalties for restaurants that fail to inform customers whether they are eating foreign imports vs. local wild-caught Gulf shrimp. Louisiana’s leadership in disclosure requirements may explain why SEAD Consulting’s findings first in Baton Rouge and now New Orleans were significantly better than the 79% inauthenticity rate of sampled cities in Florida, Mississippi, and Texas where no such laws exist.

“Louisiana is leading the fight against restaurant mislabeling of seafood, with false advertising rates significantly lower than other Gulf Coast states,” says John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “But visitors to New Orleans want to sample the best of Louisiana’s culinary scene and still must be skeptical about where the shrimp comes from despite the décor and even implications on the menu. Federal and state regulators have ensured U.S. shrimp stocks—with its unbeatable flavor and crispness—remain abundant, but not so much its shrimpers. Enforcement must catch up quickly to protect what is left of the domestic shrimp industry.” 

In 2024, SSA worked with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to communicate to seafood restaurants that it is a violation of federal law for restaurants to create an impression that they are offering wild-caught domestic shrimp when farmed, foreign shrimp is being served. In addition, Alabama recently enacted disclosure rules for seafood served in restaurants and legislation has been introduced in Mississippi to expand its catfish disclosure requirements in food service establishments to all seafood.

SEAD Consulting’s work bolsters the domestic shrimp industry’s ability to sell to food service establishments; improved enforcement of seafood labeling also helps restaurants that offer consumers authentic domestic shrimp and currently compete against businesses substituting cheaper, foreign, farm-raised shrimp under false pretenses.

The Louisiana Shrimp Task Force, commissioned SEAD Consulting to conduct this study and to sample restaurants in other Louisiana cities. SSA has commissioned additional studies across the Gulf Coast and South Atlantic, with work continuing.

Here are SEAD Consulting’s total findings of seafood restaurants giving the impression of U.S. wild-caught shrimp while serving imported farm-raised shrimp by market:

  • Tampa and St. Petersburg, FL: 96% (42 of 44)
  • Biloxi, MS: 81% (36 of 44)
  • Galveston and Kemah, TX: 59% (26 of 44)
  • Baton Rouge, LA: 29% (7 of 24)
  • New Orleans, LA: 13% (3 of 24)
  • Additional findings from local seafood festivals

Read more about SeaD Consulting’s work

Find the restaurants using U.S. wild-caught shrimp

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