BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Seafood is something Louisiana is known for and does best. The industry brings in over $2.4 billion a year and accounts for one in 70 jobs across the state, according to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. The threat of imported seafood puts the industry and communities at risk.
SeaD Consulting took samples from 24 Baton Rouge seafood restaurants chosen at random. After doing genetic testing on the dishes at each restaurant, the group found that nearly 30% of those samples were misrepresented. Seven of the 24 restaurant samples were shown to be misleading customers by advertising shrimp as gulf shrimp when it was actually imported. Erin Williams, the Chief Operating Officer for SeaD Consulting, says there are issues all throughout the supply chain, but she says some of the restaurants that are mislabeling their products, are fully aware that they are undercutting their customers.
“We’ve found cases of both, we’ve found where restaurants are knowingly substituting and also instances where they’ve got what they believe to be domestic gulf wild-caught shrimp, and it is not,” William says.
Founder of SeaD Consulting, David Williams, says this is a big problem. Restaurants are not only lying about what is being served but also killing the local industry. Williams says at one point, there were over 15,000 licenses for shrimp harvesting in Louisiana. Now, he says it’s down to 2,500.
“The communities are being hollowed out. The Infrastructure is slowly dying and the whole culture is being destroyed or extremely damaged by the effects of this substitution,” Williams says. “Our main objective is to get the government bodies that are supposed to be doing testing and enforcement to actually test and enforce the new regulations so that the industry can reap the rewards of its history and culture.”
One of the 17 restaurants that ‘passed the test’ so to speak, was Mike Anderson’s Restaurant. It’s been in business for over 50 years. Owner Mike Anderson II tells us they have been successfully operating for so long because they sell Louisiana products and source locally.
“If you stick to our fishermen, local businesses, you’re gonna come out on top if you just go a little bit above and beyond,” Anderson says.
Anderson says many people in the restaurant business are just trying to make a dollar, and with imported seafood being significantly cheaper, they can do that. Anderson says the owners aren’t always at fault, but they still have to triple-check. He says they have been sourcing locally since the restaurant opened and continue to.
Since SeaD officials did not test every restaurant in Baton Rouge, they aren’t releasing which restaurants are falsely advertising their shrimp. They informed the Louisiana Department of Health of their testing and results. They tell WAFB that they are hoping more enforcement will come from their results. Come January 1, restaurants in Louisiana that do not inform their customers if they have imported shrimp will be in violation of sanitary code.
The restaurants that ‘passed the test’ are below:
- Mike Anderson’s Restaurant
- Cork’s Cajun Fried Fish & Shrimp
- Crawfords
- Dempsey’s
- Geaux Fish Market
- Jubans Restaurant and Bar
- Off the Hook
- Parrain’s Seafood Restaurant
- Phils Oyster Bar
- Po Boy Express
- Rice and Roux
- Roux 61
- Sammy’s grill
- Stabs prime
- The Chimes
- Willies
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