It would be reasonable to expect Gulf Coast shrimp on your plate when dining by the water in the South, but many restaurants are serving imports sourced from thousands of miles away—without lowering their prices. As Brett Anderson writes for the New York Times, a newly developed genetic test that can quickly pinpoint seafood species is revealing just how common seafood mislabeling has become. Dave Williams, a commercial fisheries scientist and founder of SEAD Consulting, has been using his test at randomly chosen restaurants in the South since late 2024 to make clear the scope of the fraud.
On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, only eight out of 44 restaurants tested were serving local shrimp, despite restaurant decor and menus that suggested otherwise. SEAD found a 77% fraud rate in both Wilmington, NC, and Savannah, Georgia. The article's figures don't stop there: Half the shrimp consumed in the US was sourced from the Gulf just 40 years ago; cheaper imported shrimp, mainly from Asia and South America, now make up more than 90% of the US market. It's making it increasingly impossible for American shrimpers to make a living. To wit, in 2013, Louisiana harvested 57 million pounds of white shrimp, valued at $128 million. In the last year, a nearly identical amount was worth only $54 million.
And yet restaurants "are charging historically high prices for shrimp cocktails," notes Anderson. To add insult to injury, a 2020 LSU study found two-thirds of imported shrimp in Baton Rouge contained banned veterinary drugs. (Read the full article, which looks at why Louisiana is beginning to have some success with stricter enforcement of laws around menu labeling.) (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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