Seafood testing campaign ahead of Super Bowl raises awareness of foreign shrimp

By Wesley Muller
Contributing Writer

(lailluminator.com) — A new round of genetic seafood testing conducted for a state advisory panel detected foreign shrimp that was falsely presented as domestic in a small percentage of the restaurants sampled in New Orleans, despite a new state law that forbids the practice.

Sead Consulting, a Houston, Sead launched its testing efforts last year at restaurants and festivals along the Gulf Coast as domestic shrimpers and governments try to crack down on the influx of cheap foreign catch flooding the U.S. seafood market over the past two decades.

“While New Orleans has the lowest shrimp fraud rate we’ve seen in our multi-state study so far, the deception we did uncover is particularly blatant,” Sead Consulting executive Erin Williams said in the release. “These restaurants aren’t just using suggestive imagery and wording — they are explicitly marketing their shrimp as ‘Gulf’ or ‘authentic’ while serving something else.”

It is illegal to misrepresent imported seafood as local and can result in heavy fines and, in some cases, even felony criminal charges at the federal level. On the regulatory side, the Federal Trade Commission prohibits restaurants from using misleading menu descriptions, slogans, decorations or imagery, such as nets or photos of shrimp boats on their walls, that suggest their seafood is local when they’re actually serving imported farm-raised fare.

Additionally, a Louisiana law that took effect this year ushered in heavier fines for false seafood labeling and required restaurants to clearly state the country of origin of seafood on their menus. Similar state laws have not been enforced in the past.

The Louisiana Restaurant Association, which state lawmakers have asked to help make restaurant owners aware of the new law, did not respond to requests for comment Monday made by phone and email.

Sead does not disclose the names of restaurants found to be misrepresenting their seafood. Instead, the company said it prefers to publicly list the restaurants that are operating truthfully.

In December, the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force, an advisory panel for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, asked Sead Consulting to analyze shrimp from restaurants across multiple cities in an effort to eliminate all shrimp fraud in the state.

“Customers deserve to know exactly what they’re eating, and our shrimping communities must be able to trust that restaurants using local shrimp imagery and language are genuinely selling that product,” Louisiana Shrimp Task Force member Andrew Blanchard said in a statement.

To view the list of restaurants in compliance at the time of the latest round of genetic seafood testing, go to: https://lailluminator.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/NOLAPR.docx.pdf.

This article originally published in the February 10, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.