BATON ROUGE — Shrimp and seafood lovers in and around Louisiana and the Gulf Coast may have seen a recent report from SeaD Consulting — a company that does genetic testing of seafood, monitoring for mislabeling and substitution fraud in the industry.
In the first in a series of investigations across the state, the company sampled menu items at 24 restaurants in Baton Rouge, discovering that more than one in four dishes sampled were misrepresented.
A new law taking effect January 1 will require Louisiana restaurants to clearly state the country of origin of the shrimp and crawfish they sell. If found in violation, restaurants could face thousands of dollars in fines.
The company said seven out of the 24 restaurants sampled misled customers by advertising imported shrimp as locally caught Gulf shrimp. The company said that level of mislabeling could also have a major impact on the shrimping industry as a whole.
“With an estimated 2,428 restaurants across the state serving shrimp, it is likely that over 70,000 pounds of imported shrimp are misrepresented as Gulf shrimp every week,” a press release from SeaD states. “Over the course of a year, this mislabeling could (very conservatively) amount to 3.66 million pounds of processed shrimp, which if captured by local shrimpers, could generate upwards of $26.1 million in additional revenue for Louisiana’s shrimping communities.”
UWK spoke with Erin Williams, Chief Operations Officer for the company, and Founder Dave Williams to find out how restaurants in Baton Rouge were chosen and why they can’t reveal the identities of restaurants found guilty of mislabeling Gulf shrimp.
Restaurants chosen at random
SeaD told UWK that the 24 restaurants sampled in Baton Rouge were compiled through a random generator program. Williams said roughly four weeks ago, SeaD began testing products from restaurants across the Capitol City, testing labeling accuracy and identifying the types of shrimp being sold.
“The test is very accurate and can be used on cooked, raw, or basically any type of product. So we’re able to take a sample from a restaurant that we have just been served and we can find out whether or not it’s farm raised or not,” Williams said.
Of the seven restaurants in Baton Rouge found to be selling mislabeled shrimp, Williams said none of them listed that fact on their menu and some of those restaurants were charging even more for imported shrimp than restaurants selling the real thing.
Williams said his company doesn’t name the restaurants found selling imported shrimp because it wouldn’t be fair to the entire market.
“We don’t publicly name the restaurants who are wrongdoers because that would be unfair to all the other restaurants that are wrongdoers who believe they’ve gotten away with it. What we try to do is keep things positive and we mention the restaurants that are doing the right thing and then we just give them the percentage of restaurants that are doing the wrong thing,” Williams explained, noting that he doesn’t have plans to ever reveal those establishments in violation.
“I don’t believe in publicly embarrassing restaurants who are unlucky enough to be randomly checked by us.”
Of restaurants in Baton Rouge selling authentic Gulf shrimp, Williams shouted out 17 of them which can be found below.
- Bistro Byronz-William Grove
- Cork’s Cajun Fried Fish & Shrimp
- Crawfords
- Dempsey’s
- Geaux Fish Market
- Jubans Restaurant & Bar
- Mike Anderson’s Restaurant
- Off the Hook
- Parrain’s Seafood Restaurant
- Phil’s Oyster Bar
- Po Boy Express
- Rice and Roux
- Roux 61
- Sammy’s Grill
- Stabs Prime
- The Chimes
- Willies
Erin and Dave Williams also said restaurants not buying locally captured shrimp are having a major financial impact on one of the state’s most financially important industries.
“Our costal communities that rely on this industry to bring vibrance to their communities are missing out on millions of dollars each calendar year because of undercutting and mislabeled seafood,” Erin Williams said.
Dave Williams said it’s also embarrassing and restaurants advertising Louisiana seafood while shelling out imported shrimp for high dollar should be ashamed to do business in the state.
“A lot of times, people visit Louisiana to experience the food and heritage and it’s somewhat embarrassing when somebody who lives in Chicago comes down to the Gulf Coast to eat good local shrimp and they don’t get that served to them. When you take advantage of the culture and the history of a community and basically suck that revenue out that should be there for the community because of your actions, then I would call you more of a parasite than a restauranter but that is not the official opinion of our company,” Williams said.
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