AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Unless you're allergic, one of the highlights of visiting America's Southern and Gulf states is feasting on fresh, wild-caught shrimp. In some places you can dine and watch the fresh catches come in. But where did the high-priced shrimp on your plate really come from? A group backed by the Southern Shrimp Alliance test shrimp being served up in areas popular with tourists. They recently focused on Charleston, South Carolina, and found that 90% of the shrimp they ordered wasn't the expensive stuff on the menus but, rather, shipped in from Asia. The bait-and-switch, says our guest, is hurting the floundering shrimp industry. Erin Williams is the founder and COO of SeaD Consulting.
ERIN WILLIAMS: There might be thousands of restaurants within a market, but we're specifically looking at those seafood restaurants. And we collect, you know, how they represent themselves, what their menu items look like. And then once we've compiled that list, we use an algorithm to then select those restaurants that will be tested.
RASCOE: Why isn't it simpler or easier just to buy local and use the local shrimp?
WILLIAMS: So if you're using an imported farm-raised shrimp, the cost is typically lower. So there's an economic motive behind that to potentially replace that premium product with less premium seafood items. That's why we focused on this, and it's the No. 1 eaten seafood in the U.S.
RASCOE: How is the industry doing since they have to compete against these kind of cheap imports?
WILLIAMS: So it's made it a very difficult situation. The way we look at it is if every restaurant that implied or said they're serving a domestic product actually did so, then the shrimp industry wouldn't be in the state it is currently. They would be receiving their fair market share, and they wouldn't be at such a disadvantage.
RASCOE: Is it the restaurants who are making the switch? Are they knowingly doing this, or is it possible that the shrimp is, like, mislabeled along the way and they think they're maybe buying local shrimp?
WILLIAMS: Typically, we see it at the restaurant level. There's a little bit more strict oversight when it comes to people supplying shrimp. There will be country-of-origin labels on those boxes and invoices and etc. So the level of fraud is greatly diminished because of just the transparency in that.
RASCOE: Is this kind of bait-and-switch at the restaurant level illegal? Like, is there any kind of government oversight there? Because as a diner, you don't really have any way to know, like, where the shrimp in the gumbo or the po'boy is from.
WILLIAMS: Consumer fraud is illegal, period. But due to the robustness of this supply chain, it's very, very hard to monitor. What we see is states like Louisiana that have very strong truth-in-menu-labeling laws and enforcement to go behind it. Their rate of fraud is significantly lower.
RASCOE: Is there anything a customer can do? 'Cause, I mean, they - they're not going to have their own testing kit, but is there anything a customer can do to make sure that whatever restaurant they're at, that they're actually buying local shrimp if that's important to that consumer?
WILLIAMS: You know, support advocating for increased transparency and authenticity in the supply chain 'cause it doesn't just help the consumer who wants to get that fresh quality seafood - the seafood they're paying that money for - but it also helps, you know, the honest restaurants in that marketplace that are at a economic disadvantage. It makes it very hard to compete when you're doing the right thing in honestly sourcing and other competitors in your marketplace are charging the same, if not more, for a less premium product.
RASCOE: That is Erin Williams of SeaD Consulting in Houston, Texas. Thank you so much for joining us.
WILLIAMS: Thank you so much for having me.
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