Dissatisfaction Over Imported Seafood

MOBILE Ala.
By Rick McCann
February 1, 2025

As a frequent visitor to Alabama’s Gulf Coast since 1989 and a part-time resident for many years before becoming a full-time resident, one of the questions that I often ask when ordering seafood remains the same.
 Is the seafood locally sourced or imported?

Believe it or not, some waiters and waitresses have answered honestly, sometimes quietly saying that it had been imported while others probably said what I wanted to hear instead of the truth about their products.

Homegrown, locally sourced anything, has always been my preference, especially when it comes to food, whatever that food might be.

Nationwide and here along the Gulf Coast, cheap, often lower quality seafood continues to flood our country’s seafood markets, restaurants and family’s tables while putting thousands of Americans out work and out of business.

As a New Englander, I’ve watched large fishing vessels bringing in their catch straight to the dock and selling it immediately and many times that seafood was being cooked the same day.
You can’t get fresher than that!

Now, the fleets, the boats and the men who braved the weather to bring in the catch of the day are all but gone. From the once hundreds of boats out on the water, to just a few dozen fishing vessels that remain.
The cost of doing business for those left have more than tripled with the rise in fuel, insurance and wages, while the prices for their catch continues to shrink instead of increase, mainly because of the glut of foreign seafood coming from Asian countries, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, Norway and Thailand among others.

But the tide is beginning to turn in favor of the American fisherman and the small businessman.

Consumers are demanding more locally sourced products, and many are becoming anti-foreign imported food.

The call for homegrown products has been rising for at least the past ten years but the COVID Pandemic caused more Americans to question, where their food was coming from especially when food from other countries slowed down or didn’t come at all because of the shipping crises during COVID.

People flocked to farm stores, Co-Ops and feed stores to buy chickens, vegetable plants and gain knowledge about providing their own food.
One flour company noted a substantial rise in sales as many people once again began baking their own bread.

Now one might think that after the two-year lockdown was lifted and food was once again readily available, people would go back to their old way of thinking and the movement for home-grown and locally sourced would slow down or maybe fizzle out. But that hasn’t been the case at all.

In April 2024, the National Gardening Association reported that over 43% of Americans were growing food at home, which is a 17-year high. And the number of people who own animals to be used for protein has increased by 27 %.

The bottom line is that Americans woke up while they were locked up.

State governments are now voting to prevent foreign countries from owning farmland in the US for fear those owners could dominate the food grown in America and though the quality may not be an issue, the pricing would be. It’s like having just one oil company having dominance over our gas prices.

State legislators and some citizen groups have begun also fighting to reduce or to even block seafood from other countries from entering our food chain. Some have even used federal laws that are already in place such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allows the United States to impose import restrictions on seafood products from foreign fisheries that do not meet U.S. standards.
Under several statutes, the United States may impose import restrictions on seafood products from foreign fisheries that do not meet U.S. standards for legal harvest or mitigating bycatch of protected resources.

Other states have enacted laws requiring sellers, including restaurants, to identify where the seafood came from while several states have also included laws that require notifying consumers of the freshness of the catch.

During the 2024 regular legislative session, sweeping changes brought changes to laws affecting restaurants and other food establishments to protect Louisiana’s struggling domestic seafood industry.

One provision in the new law requires any food service establishment that serves foreign crawfish or shrimp to print a disclaimer on its menu: “Some items served at this establishment may contain imported crawfish or shrimp. Ask for more information.”

 Though there is still some confusion on how to enforce the law.

Under Act No. 2024-339 in Alabama, restaurants and delis must label fish and shrimp by country of origin or as imported but a recent complaint by a consumer group states that many sellers are still not in compliance and some have asked, where’s the enforcement of the law?

The country of origin is “the country in which an animal, from which a covered commodity is derived, slaughtered or substantially transformed.” U.S. fish or shrimp may be listed with a state name, USA, United States of America or a tradename or trademark containing any of those. Suppliers are to provide the country of origin to restaurants and stores, under the law.

The act also requires that fish and shrimp be labeled as farm-raised or wild fish. Wild fish does not include “net-pen aquaculture or other farm-raised fish or shellfish.”

Complaints about imported seafood are increasing here in Alabama and nationwide regarding quality of the product, pricing and misidentified fish selling low-end and less costly fish for a more sought after and higher price fish.

Alabama Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville have joined the fight to protect American fishermen.

Britt (R-Montgomery) and Tuberville (R-Auburn) joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Commerce Committee; and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) to introduce the bipartisan Illegal Red Snapper and Tuna Enforcement Act, which directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop a standard methodology for identifying the country of origin of red snapper and certain species of tuna imported into the United States.

Britt, Tuberville and Cruz introduced similar legislation during the 118th Congress, which passed the Commerce Committee last July.

Technology can chemically test and find the geographic origin of many foods, but not for red snapper and tuna, the senators said. The legislation aims to develop a field test kit that can be used to accurately ascertain whether fish were caught in U.S. or foreign waters, thus allowing federal and state law enforcement officers to identify the origin of the fish and confiscate illegally caught red snapper and tuna before it is imported back into the U.S.

“Cartel-backed poachers need to face consequences for their illicit activities in the Gulf of America,” said Britt. “Red snapper is a core component of Coastal Alabama’s economy, and our hardworking fishermen and food producers deserve fairness when fishing in the Gulf.

Mexican fishermen are known to cross the maritime border between the U.S. and Mexico on small boats called “lanchas” to illegally catch red snapper and other high quality often sought after fish in U.S. waters and return to Mexico. The fish are sold in Mexico or mixed in with legally caught red snapper then exported back into the United States across land borders.

This has been going on for years and enforcement has been hard to carry out.

Red snapper is one of the most well-managed and profitable fish in the Gulf of America, but illegal fishing by Mexican lanchas puts law-abiding U.S. fishermen and seafood producers at a competitive disadvantage. Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing activities violate both national and international fishing regulations.

“Alabama lands 34% of all recreationally caught Red Snapper in the Gulf,” said Tuberville.

Consumers, now more than ever, know that it’s always best to know where your food has come from.

In seaport towns across the country, some fishermen have learned a lesson from the farmer. And it’s a lesson that is paying them dividends and keeping them in business. Some are even thriving.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a program across the country that connects farmers with consumers. Based on a subscription model, local farmers deliver a weekly box of fresh, locally grown vegetables that are in season instead of vegetables bought at a supermarket that has often times been in cold storage for months.
With CSA programs consumers know who is growing their food, where it has been grown and they know that it’s always fresh and always wholesome.

Now, seafood providers, AKA, local fishermen, have themselves adopted the same type of model. Taking their daily fresh catch directly to the consumer, cutting out the middlemen and becoming more of a fish purveyor, selling direct to the consumers and it’s been great for the buyers and the people catching the seafood, keeping dozens of local businesses afloat, literally.

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