JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 There are shrimp shenanigans going on in the City of Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to a new study<\/a> that found more than half of 44 local restaurants surveyed explicitly misrepresented the origins of the shrimp they served to customers. <\/p>\n Jacksonville is known for its shrimp.<\/p>\n Our Mayor recently sent 20 pounds of Mayport Shrimp to the Mayor of Buffalo when the Jags lost in the first round of the playoffs, and we\u2019ve even got a baseball team named after them. <\/p>\n \u201cThe US shrimping industry began in Fernandina Beach in 1899,\u201d said Mike Eddy, owner of Beacon Fisheries, a seafood processing facility in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n But Eddy explained the shrimping industry in Northeast Florida has been struggling for years.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of the decline in the fisheries and the economics of it, we\u2019re losing our heritage,\u201d Eddy said.<\/p>\n Southern Shrimp Alliance Board member Christine Gala argued one of the big factors contributing to the decline is the false advertising of local and wild-caught shrimp.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen in fact, they\u2019re probably eating imported shrimp from a shrimp farm in Ecuador,\u201d Gala said.<\/p>\n A new study<\/a> commissioned by the SSA used genetic testing to fact-check restaurants\u2019 claims about the origins of their shrimp in eight states.<\/p>\n \u201cFlorida ranked at the bottom. The worst offender,\u201d Gala said.<\/p>\n Jacksonville fared poorly as well, with 25 of the 44 restaurants surveyed explicitly misrepresenting the origin of their shrimp.<\/p>\n Six of those are even listed on the Jax Mayport Shrimp and Seafood Trail<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to sell farm-raised shrimp, just call it shrimp, but don\u2019t call it Mayport Shrimp. Don\u2019t mislead people,\u201d Eddy said.<\/p>\n And shrimp-industry experts argue that what may seem like shrimp-sized lies come at a huge cost to the industry and customers.<\/p>\n Mislabeled shrimp costs the US shrimping industry anywhere from $300 to $600 million a year.<\/p>\n It not only costs the shrimping industry, but also consumers, who paid an average of $2 more per plate for falsely advertised American wild-caught shrimp, according to the study.<\/p>\n Gala argued enacting labeling requirements for seafood products in Florida would be a big help, as states with those laws on the books have authenticity rates four times higher than those that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would make it a lot clearer to them you can\u2019t put pictures of the shrimp boats in your market and pretend like you\u2019re getting them there right off the dock,\u201d Gala said.<\/p>\n In 2025, legislation was filed in Florida that would have imposed labeling requirements.<\/p>\n The bill never got a hearing in the Florida House and passed only one Senate committee.<\/p>\n Gala said the industry will be ramping up its efforts to get a bill across the finish line in 2026.<\/p>\n You can find the full list of local restaurants the study determined honestly represented the source of their shrimp here<\/a>.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 There are shrimp shenanigans going on in the City of Jacksonville. That\u2019s according to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,95150,95148,24805,95152,56463,70889,53220,28,95154,969,95153,1130,116,118,117,16009,44784,10417,634,1375,95149,9280,95151,914,628],"class_list":["post-207610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-beacon_fisheries","tag-beacon_seafood","tag-buffalo","tag-christine_gayla","tag-donna_degan","tag-ecuador","tag-fernandina_beach","tag-florida","tag-gayla","tag-jack","tag-jacks_mayport","tag-jackson","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jags","tag-jake_stofan","tag-jake_stowan","tag-local","tag-mayor","tag-mike_eddie","tag-northeast_florida","tag-southern_shrimp_alliance","tag-state","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}