U.S. Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya recently sent a letter to the top-grossing seafood restaurants in the country, cautioning them not to give their customers the false impression that they are eating wild-caught U.S. seafood when they are, in fact, serving imported, farm-raised seafood.
“Many Americans are willing to pay a premium for wild-caught, American seafood. Those customers deserve to know when they are being offered the genuine article – and when they are being offered something else,” Bedoya said in the letter sent to Red Lobster, Long John Silver’s, and Legal Sea Foods, among other companies.
Bedoya assured the chains the letter did not serve as a specific warning, a notice of penalty offense letter, or a law enforcement investigation, but he said the chains should be aware the issue is on the FTC’s radar.
“I will not hesitate to request a law enforcement investigation if I am presented with credible evidence of a law violation,” he said.
The letter is a “new reminder to companies that in all of the ways you’re communicating to a consumer, the net impression of that communication needs to be accurate," Bedoya told Reuters.
Bedoya referred restaurants to the FTC’s recent blog post, which said that restaurants are “obligated to ensure that they are not giving consumers the wrong impression,” Bedoya said.
In a hypothetical example outlined in the blog post, a seafood restaurant with beachy decor and photos of fishermen states on its menu, “Eat local! Try our seasonal fresh catch of the day!” The company’s social media images display several posts of fishermen hooking fish and scooping nets full of shrimp.
“Given this scene, would you be surprised to find out that the seasonal fresh catch was actually farmed seafood, frozen overseas, and shipped in?” the FTC said. “The restaurant never said it outright, but by using photos of fishermen and fishing boats and saying things like, ‘Eat local,” and ‘We catch ‘em,’ the decorations, menus, and social media may give people what the FTC calls a net impression that the restaurant serves fresh, local fish and shrimp.”
Under FTC rulemaking, those images result in illegally misleading customers and could be subject to hefty fines. The definition of advertisement can stretch beyond commercials, social media posts, websites, or labels, as well.
“Other things like menus, restaurant décor, or even T-shirts and hats worn by servers or customers can be ads, too. The same rules apply. Don’t make claims you can’t back up,” the FTC said.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance and other domestic shrimp representative groups brought the marketing issue to Bedoya’s attention during a July visit he took to meet with U.S. commercial shrimpers and other industry members in Biloxi, Mississippi, U.S.A.
They specifically told Bedoya and FTC Attorney Advisor Max Miller about “the substantial harm done to the U.S. royal red shrimp fishery by the marketing of imported shrimp as royal red shrimp at Gulf Coast restaurants,” SSA said.
Fishermen provided examples of national restaurant chains selling imported, farmed shrimp through the use of images and likenesses that represent the U.S. shrimp industry, along with examples of Argentinian shrimp being substituted for royal red shrimp on menus, “effectively wiping out this premium fishery by forcing shrimpers to match the prices of imported shrimp,” SSA said.
SSA Executive Director John Williams praised Bedoya’s letter to restaurants, saying that its “efforts to make clear that misleading marketing of farmed seafood in restaurants is a violation of law is incredibly important to the families of commercial shrimpers across the U.S.”
“There is nothing wrong with restaurants serving foreign farmed shrimp to their customers, but it is flat-out wrong to use our industry to market imports. If restaurants want to sell foreign pond-raised shrimp, they should do so with the imagery of those industries, including the armed guards watching over workers, the pharmacies providing veterinary drugs, and the devastation of local estuaries that have to take the farms’ wastewater,” Williams said.
