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This letter to the editor comes from Chef Dean Neff of Wilmington.
Neff is responding to an article by food writer and journalist Brett Anderson, published in The New York Times. The article, with the headline "Investigating Shrimp Fraud Is an Urgent Matter on the Gulf Coast," ran online with the sub-hed, "With a flood of imported seafood driving the U.S. shrimp industry to the edge of ruin, a consulting company out of Houston is testing truth in menu labeling," on April 30, and was published in print in early May.
For the past decade I’ve worked as a chef in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I’ve been a two-time semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef Southeast Award. Last year I was a national finalist for the foundation’s Outstanding Chef Award. Neither I nor my restaurants could have achieved these accolades without my community, especially the Cape Fear region’s farmers, fishers, shrimpers, crabbers, and foragers. As a chef, one of my most crucial duties is to forge relationships built on trust inside and outside the kitchen. In order for my guests to trust in the food my kitchen serves, my kitchen must trust the people who grow and source that food. Recognition means nothing if diners cannot trust what they’re being served.
At my restaurant Seabird our ethos is based on sustainable, transparently sourced, regional seafood. When serving our guests we enjoy telling the stories of the people whose work has brought the meal to the table, and every day these providers teach us about the complexities of the seafood industry. Each type of seafood varies in its seasonality, perishability, and sustainability, not to mention if or how it can be frozen and thawed to serve. Of all these foods, North Carolina wild shrimp is one of the most popular; it’s also one of the most complicated to source. I want to talk about why.
But first I must touch on a recent article published in The New York Times by Brett Anderson that has shaken the confidence of people who serve and enjoy wild shrimp, especially here in Wilmington. Anderson mentions my city by name as one where chefs are supposedly deceiving their guests by serving foreign, farm raised shrimp that is advertised as wild. Anderson cites the work of a company called SeaD Consulting that claims to have tested shrimp served by a sample of 44 of the Cape Fear Region’s over 600 restaurants over 3 days at the behest of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. According to a SeaD press release, 77% of Wilmington’s restaurants are misleading the public with claims of serving wild shrimp.
Anderson’s article and SeaD’s reported findings have sparked anxiety in the Cape Fear region’s entire restaurant scene, but the controversy has also sparked frustration with what Anderson’s reporting leaves out as well as questions surrounding SeaD’s testing methods and findings. For example, how were the restaurants chosen? Where were the tests conducted? Were the shrimp raw or cooked, and what were the conversations with staff on the premises?
These questions are more than relevant considering that in his New York Times article Anderson links to another piece published in (Louisiana Illuminator) about SeaD owner Dave Williams testing shrimp at the (Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival), where “Williams acknowledged his festival experiment wasn’t controlled enough to withstand scientific scrutiny.” The question now becomes, how is testing restaurant food different than testing festival food? Why trust the results of one when the founder of the company himself says we can’t trust the results of the other?
But perhaps more egregious is Anderson’s decision not to consider the complex challenge restaurants face when sourcing wild shrimp. Most diners might assume that for a chef sourcing shrimp is as simple as driving to the docks each morning when the shrimp boats come in. I wish it were so. Most North Carolina shrimp is sold frozen, often through a process called IQF that is conducted in a facility often far away from the docks. After the shrimp is purchased by a dealer, it is shipped to the specialized individual quick freeze packer, which often requires crossing state lines; and then back to the dealer’s freezer, where chefs like me purchase the shrimp, fully trusting that it has been sourced as advertised to us, despite its circuitous journey.
As a chef I rely on two things to know for certain that I am serving North Carolina wild shrimp: the first is my knowledge of what wild shrimp tastes like, and the second is the word of the dealer who has sold me the shrimp. While I only work with dealers with whom I’ve established a trusting relationship, it’s not lost on me that some dealers and packers might be willing to misrepresent foreign shrimp for local for financial gain. My invoices are and have always been open to anyone looking for assurance about the origins of the shrimp I serve, but those invoices are only as good as the word of the dealers who have sourced the shrimp. It’s disappointing that Anderson wasn’t willing to dig just a little deeper to reveal how challenging this important detail of sourcing seafood, especially shrimp, can be.
I would welcome the opportunity to work with Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC 7) and other members of the restaurant and shrimp industry to craft policies that support North Carolina shrimpers while building confidence in our restaurants and accountability in the sourcing process. At a minimum we must have a certification process so restaurants and their guests can be confident in the truth of local menus. We should explore state policy that holds restaurants, packers, and dealers accountable.
In the closing of Anderson’s article, SeaD founder Dave Williams overlooks the complicated nature of sourcing shrimp, saying, “the real problem is the restaurants.” Our kitchens and menus are the last stop on our food’s journey, and, questions regarding testing methods aside, it is shortsighted and irresponsible not to acknowledge the many stops shrimp makes before arriving in our kitchens.
All of us within the chain must be held accountable to the truth. Chefs love to share the stories of the food they serve. Let’s create changes in the shrimp industry in North Carolina to ensure that all of these stories are true.
Back in late April, my colleague Johanna Still forwarded me a press release from the Southern Shrimp Alliance. Like the articles Neff referenced, it relied on genetic testing of shrimp by SeaD, in this case reporting that 34 of the 44 randomly selected restaurants in the greater Wilmington area were essentially committing fraud: serving shrimp advertised either on the menu or by staff as local and wild-caught that were actually foreign, farm-raised varieties.
The release included hectoring quotes from David Williams, who owns SeaD, saying it was “incredibly disappointing” that restaurants mislead customers. The release also implied strongly that this was a representative sample of the region’s restaurants. I shared it around the newsroom and we had a little bit of a laugh. We imagined the spinning-newspaper trope with the bold, all-caps headline “SHRIMP FRAUD.”
We did a quick write up on it in The Dive, as did WECT and others. We were clear about how many restaurants were actually tested – and, at the time, the Shrimp Alliance told us follow-up testing was expected to catch other bad actors (to date, that hasn’t happened).
But I was honestly surprised to see a couple thousand words from Brett Anderson on the topic in The New York Times, including this passage, right near the end:
“With their most recent restaurant tests, in Wilmington, N.C., producing what has become a predictably discouraging outcome (77 percent fraud rate), the team appeared taken aback by the results.”
The article focuses mainly on the Gulf Coast — specifically, several festivals — and this is the only reference to Wilmington in the piece. Several chefs, including Neff, that I’ve spoken to voiced frustration that the article didn’t expand on how SeaD arrived at that percentage. The article noted at least two occasions where SeaD visited seafood festivals, both had five vendors and, in both cases, four of the five restaurants served shrimp that were shown to be foreign, farmed-raised shrimp — not wild local variety that was advertised.
That's not a sample as much as it is a complete test. But in Wilmington, SeaD said they tested 44 restaurants — out of 600 restaurants in the area. A sample that might leave some wanting.
There are also the questions Neff raised about the veracity of the testing method. To test festival shrimp, SeaD set up shop in a hotel conference room. As Neff mentioned, an article in the Louisiana Illuminator published last September notes that this method wouldn’t withstand scientific scrutiny.
There’s also the choice to name the good actors but not the bad actors.
Certainly, there are unscrupulous restaurants (I know because I’ve worked at some) that lie about key adjectives: local, organic, vegan, gluten-free, fresh, never-frozen, etc. The horror stories I could tell you.
But I’ve also known and worked with chefs who work tirelessly to deliver, truthfully, on all of those promises — chefs who would absolutely love to see liars publicly shamed. “Clowns,” we call those deceptive folks (minus a few choice adjectives of our own), running “clowntown” restaurants.
There may be legal liability concerns behind SeaD’s decision to name the innocent but not the guilty, but there’s also something of a McCarthy’s list vibe — “While I cannot take the time to name all the restaurants serving fraudulent shrimp, I have here in my hand a list…”
In the end, I think the Shrimp Alliance, like many advocacy groups, is basically coming from a good place. Their stated goals are better consumer awareness and state-level labeling laws – both to the end of strengthening trust in local restaurants and, ultimately, supporting those local businesses. Hard to be mad about that.
But that doesn’t mean their ‘evidence’ passes journalistic muster, especially if you’re not going to lay out the potential limitations of SeaD’s research, which they rely heavily on.
I somehow doubt Brett Anderson thought much about the impact a throwaway line would have on Wilmington (if he did, I’d have more concerns about the piece, not less). I will say it's not the only time I've seen NYT blow through town like a bull in a china shop when they cover a local story. In my opinion, part of that has to do with their attitude, part to do with selling off their local papers, like the StarNews, that were once part of their network, and part to do with an overly credulous reliance on advocacy groups for evidence.
And, for what it’s worth, I reached out repeatedly to NYT to give Anderson the opportunity to respond to the concerns I’ve heard from Neff and others. But so far, I haven’t heard anything back.
I think this is an issue that could use some more exploration. It’s not exactly hard-hitting government investigation, but — at the same time — it’s a sprawling economic story that touches on legislative regulation (or the lack of it), international commerce, and local business.
It’s also an issue I’d love to hear more from you about. So, send me your thoughts on all this.
[Disclosure notice: Dean Neff's restaurant Seabird is an underwriter for WHQR. Underwriting or other financial support for WHQR is not taken into consideration for the selection and publication of letters to the editor or other opinion pieces.]
