Ever thought that big, pink Gulf Coast shrimp you ordered at the restaurant or bought from the store didn’t taste juicy or salty enough? Maybe that’s because it wasn’t really from the Gulf.
As The Associated Press reports, from New York to New Orleans to Oregon, consumers are being misled about the shrimp they’re buying, according to a survey by the advocacy group Oceana.
Cheap, imported, farm-raised shrimp is being sold as prized wild-caught Gulf shrimp while common, more plentiful shrimp is being sold as premium. And shrimp of all kinds is sold with no indication whatsoever about where it came from, the group says.
Oceana says it found about 30% of 143 shrimp products bought from 111 vendors were not what the label said they were. Bad labeling was discovered on shrimp sold at national and regional supermarkets and smaller grocery stores alike. Restaurants, from national chains to high-dollar eateries, were also selling poorly labeled shrimp, the group says.
The survey looked at shrimp sold in Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and various spots around the Gulf of Mexico, as well as New York City, which it deemed the worst offender.
The group acknowledges that the survey was a small sample, but says it used a technique involving DNA to trace the shrimp’s roots.
“It was a first good look at shrimp,” says Kimberly Warner, a marine scientist with Oceana, who went out and obtained many of the samples.
The group’s report came as no surprise to fishermen and others involved in the shrimp industry.
“I’ve been shouting this for ages from the rooftop,” says Kimberly Chauvin, who runs a family shrimp business with fishing boats and docks in Chauvin, Louisiana.
She says shrimp mislabeling will get worse unless regulators “start handing out big fines” to companies that break the Food and Drug Administration’s labeling laws.
