Enter a seafood restaurant in New Orleans, the kind with a handwritten daily menu on a chalkboard, a bowl of àouffée arriving in a cloud of steam, and the aroma of butter and cayenne reaching the table before the server does. Until recently, most diners didn’t think to ask where that crawfish actually came from, and most restaurants weren’t required to provide a clear response. The crawfish may have originated in the Atchafalaya Basin and been collected by a commercial trapper whose family has been working those waters for many generations.
Alternatively, it may have come from a Chinese processing plant in a frozen bag, been combined with a smaller amount of local goods at some stage in the supply chain, and been sold with a description that provided no meaningful information about where it came from. On a plate, both items may appear the same. Frequently, the costs associated with them are not. Louisiana has made the decision to begin mandating that the distinction be made apparent.
The new law makes it unlawful to mix domestic and foreign catch in order to conceal its origin. This practice has been so common in the distribution of seafood in Gulf states that industry insiders and regulators have been characterizing it as one of the worst-kept secrets in the industry. Restaurants in Louisiana must now officially disclose on their menus if they serve imported shrimp or crawfish.
Seafood markets, food retailers, and wholesalers must keep meticulous invoice records that track the provenance of each seafood purchase. Penalties for infractions are designed to increase in severity: a first offense of mislabeling or combining domestic and imported goods may result in a fine of up to $15,000; a third infraction may cost up to $50,000. These are not symbolic sums intended to be absorbed as operating expenses. Their goal is to alter the math.
The Louisiana Department of Health has switched from the warning-letter strategy that typified previous enforcement to active citation and fining. According to reports, both fast-food chains and upscale restaurants are on the list of establishments that have received citations, indicating that the compliance issue was not limited to the lower end of the market.
That width is telling in some way. Selling unlabeled imported seafood as if it were domestic was not a fringe activity. It was so prevalent and lucrative that it continued to exist concurrently in several market niches. The fact that voluntary compliance was not yielding the labeling accuracy that the legislation ostensibly demanded led directly to the new enforcement stance.
Alongside the economic dimension, the safety factor is important to consider on its own terms. Inspections over the past ten years have revealed the presence of foreign shrimp and crawfish treated with prohibited veterinary chemicals, such as malachite green, chloramphenicol, and nitrofurans, in Gulf state markets. These products were usually transported through distribution networks that sufficiently concealed their origin to evade detection at the retail level.
A customer or regulator can at least exercise proper scrutiny when a product’s place of origin is accurately labeled. That scrutiny does not occur when it is disguised as domestic catch. Although the labeling rules are usually framed largely as consumer protection and economic protection for the local fishing sector, they are, in this sense, also a food safety safeguard.
These regulations seem to represent something that the shrimpers and crawfish trappers who work in Louisiana’s coastal and wetland waters have been fighting for without much success for a long time. For the better part of two decades, they have watched their market share decline due to cheaper imports from overseas that often find their way into retail and food service with ambiguous or deceptive labeling.
It remains to be seen if the enforcement is upheld and if the fines are truly collected and significant enough to change behavior on a big scale. Citations are being sent out. The penalties are recorded on paper. Although it’s still uncertain if the crawfish in the next bowl of àouffée in New Orleans come from the Atchafalaya or anywhere else, there should now be a means to find out.
