The Tampa-St. Petersburg area is home to some of its state’s best food, from the iconic Cuban sandwich to the legendary Florida steakhouse with one of the world’s biggest wine cellars. Head down East Polk street in Tampa, and you can find the restaurant that makes Alton Brown’s favorite breakfast sandwich. Less than an hour’s drive away, near the Gulf of Mexico, is Tarpon Springs, a Florida beach town that makes some of the best Greek food in the country. There are a ton of great finds in the area, which is why it’s disappointing that one of the foods you might not get in its restaurants is local Florida shrimp.
SeaD Consulting, a food safety technology company that operates in and around the Gulf of Mexico, revealed (via Southern Shrimp Alliance) that 42 out of 44 randomly selected restaurants they tested committed shrimp fraud. These establishments either implied or outright stated that their shrimp were of local origin, but DNA tests conducted by SeaD found that 96% of their samples were made using imported shrimp species. Based on its results, the only two restaurants that served local shrimp were Salt Shack on the Bay in Tampa and Stillwaters Tavern in St. Petersburg.
False Advertising About Shrimp Is More Rampant Than You Think
This was the highest incidence of shrimp fraud discovered in SeaD’s study, which covered several other locations in the Gulf area. Charleston, South Carolina, had the second-highest rate of falsely labeled shrimp at 91% (40 restaurants out of 44 tested), followed closely by Biloxi, Mississippi, at 82% (36 out of 44 tested). On the flipside, New Orleans, Louisiana, had the lowest rate of shrimp fraud with only 3 out of 24 restaurants found to have falsely advertised where their shrimp was from. That means there’s a good chance each of the 12 best restaurants for Louisiana gumbo serve it with domestic shrimp.
While the sample sizes for this study can be relatively small — there are clearly more than 24 restaurants in New Orleans, after all — the regularity with which the SeaD team found fraud rates higher than 50% in each area is alarming. Florida’s case is just the biggest example of a problem that plagues a chunk of the Gulf area. This high level of false advertising might not be a big deal to many diners, but the issue goes beyond just untruthfulness; there are significant economic issues at play here as well.
Why Buying Local Shrimp Matters
The U.S. shrimp industry has suffered a 50% drop in sales over the past few years (via Spectrum News 13), due in large part to a major increase in cheaper shrimp imports. While the lower cost of imported shrimp likely plays a role in so many Florida restaurants choosing this option, it also forced local shrimpers to lower their prices in order to compete. This economic chain reaction has made it so that roughly 94% of all shrimp consumed in the United States is now imported, putting an even greater strain on local shrimpers…