TAMPA, Fla. — A recent study by SeaD Consulting found that just two of 44 Tampa Bay restaurants were serving wild caught Gulf shrimp, despite advertising they were local.
The study goes on to show that most of the restaurants were importing their shrimp from places like India, Vietnam and Ecuador.
“When diners think of Tampa and St. Pete, they think of seafood fresh from the Gulf,” said David Williams, Commercial Fishery Scientist and Founder of SEAD Consulting, who led the sampling effort. “To discover that the majority of restaurants are serving shrimp sourced from overseas is a wake-up call for the area’s food scene.”
Razieh Farzad, Ph.D., Assistant professor & Seafood Safety Extension Specialist at the University of Florida, said 80% of the seafood in the United States is farm-raised and imported, so the results of this study aren't necessarily surprising to her.
"When we are mislabeling the product, they are supporting something else, and they are unintentionally undercutting their own local industry that is working under a stricter regulation and higher price. So that is really concerning," explains Farzad.
She continued, "And the other issue, as I said, is consumer trust. Because if the consumer knows that they have been sold something that they didn't want to or they didn't order, they are not going to lose their trust, as I said, only in that restaurant. This is going to negatively affect the whole seafood value chain and our whole local seafood industry."
“Family-owned shrimp businesses operating out of the Port of Tampa are struggling to survive while local restaurants bamboozle customers into thinking locally caught shrimp are being served,” said John Williams, executive director of the Tarpon Springs-based Southern Shrimp Alliance. “If restaurants wish to serve shrimp from countries associated with labor abuses, environmental harms, and banned antibiotic use, that is their choice. But be honest and let consumers choose what they eat.”
But, Farzad says many restaurant owners may not be misrepresenting the shrimp intentionally.
"Yes, and that's an issue too, because many people might do this intentionally. As I said, we are importing more than 80% of our seafood, including shrimp, and the chain is so complex. So the restaurant owner might not know the origin of their shrimp. It's not an easy thing to identify whether the shrimp that they are purchasing is a local, imported, wild, caught or not. There are some ways to identify that, but it needs to take the samples, take it to the lab, do DNA, and extract DNA and do PCR analysis, so as consumer or even as a restaurant owner. So I want to emphasize not everyone has bad intention with this. It's hard to identify what you're purchasing, because they kind of all look the same," says Farzad.
Farzad offers this advice for the consumer.
"I think I kind of want to tell a consumer that they have to continue trust their local producer, and if they are concerned, I encourage everyone to ask question, where is this food is coming from? And be curious about the food that you have on your plate, especially if eating something local is close to your heart. I think you should make that effort and talk to your restaurant or local producer to see where your food, including seafood, is coming from I think that would be a main thing," she explains.
SeaD Consulting did not name the restaurants that were not serving wild-caught shrimp. However, they did name the two restaurants that were. Salt Shack on the Bay in Tampa and Stillwaters Tavern in St. Pete.
