A consulting group has made national headlines for exposing shrimp fraud across the country, and they found evidence that one in five seafood restaurants in Baton Rouge are serving imported shrimp without accurate labels.
Research was performed by SeaD Consulting, a private third-party testing company that conducts genetic testing on shrimp dishes, to see if restaurants and festivals are serving authentic, locally caught, wild seafood. Based in Houston with offices in New Orleans and Tallahassee, Fla., the company has tested over 1,000 restaurants in the past year and a half with the goal to spark legislative action.
“If you go to New Orleans particularly, the locals don’t accept the fact that they’re not eating local seafood. Whereas Baton Rouge, not so much,” said SeaD founder and commercial fishery scientist David Williams. “And then when you get to Shreveport and areas like that, the authenticity rates drop off really significantly.”
SeaD’s mission to tackle shrimp fraud has made national headlines, appearing in the New York Times, USA Today and Business Insider. Same with state-wide headlines, like when SeaD found that four out of five vendors at the 2024 Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival served imported shrimp…