A surge of imported shrimp and crawfish is flooding restaurants and grocery stores and customers are being misled to believe the product is locally caught. Marrero Senator Patrick Connick’s Menu Law aims to strengthen protection for consumers
“They mislabeling foreign seafood and packaging it as our culture as local seafood to the detriment to our shrimpers, and that’s what the problem was and that’s what we attempted to address in this bill.
In 2019 a law was passed to force restaurants to print on their menu if the product was imported and that year restaurants had 2600 violations with zero resulting in fines. Connick says that was due to the law being a non-critical violation and the new law would strengthen penalties making it a critical violation.
“Which gave the restaurant a time to correct it and if they corrected it the violation would go away. This is a critical violation now. Its a mark against them and they can be fined anywhere from two hundred dollars to two thousand dollars.
Now any establishment serving seafood must quote clearly display the country of origin in a manner that is easily visible to the consumer unquote. Connick says the restaurant association, retailers and importers voiced their concerns, but this is the right thing to do.
“We have to do this. I know you don’t want to do this but you have to do it. We gave them until January 1st, 2025 to give them time to clear out their product. From that point on its a different day in Louisiana hopefully.”
The law will take effect January 1st.
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