NEW ORLEANS — Only about 10% of seafood consumed in America is domestic.
That’s crippling the Louisiana seafood industry.
“For the last two years it’s just about ruined the industry,” Louisiana fisherman Pete Gerica said.
In his 50 years on the water, Gerica has never seen it this bad.
“There’s just so much you can take,” Gerica said. “Fuel prices being $4.00 a gallon. The cost of everything you buy, it’s just you can’t stay in business if you keep on spending money and you ain’t making none.”
Monday, Congressman Garret Graves and Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser testified before the Louisiana Seafood Task Force in Baton Rouge.
They want the federal government to inspect more imports and impose stricter regulations for seafood coming into the country.
"You add 10 cents a pound and get that inspection to about 50 percent of the imports, one, they’ll clean up their act or a larger portion will get rejected,” Nungesser said. “They are chalked full of antibiotics.”
Nungesser says restaurants and businesses misrepresenting the origin of their seafood should also pay a heavy price.
“Let’s make the fines substantial where it’s 5, 10, $20,000 if you’re mislabeling imports as domestic seafood and let the money go back to support the industry.”
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy is also calling for Congress to toughen up on imported seafood.
"I’m in absolute agreement that the shrimp that comes here should not be subsidized by other governments and it should pass the appropriate sanitary tests,” Cassidy said.
Louisiana fishermen tell WWL Louisiana, that what they really want from Congress is for them to level the playing field with the cheaper imports. They say that’s the only way the Gulf Coast seafood industry will survive.
“The only way you’re going to solve this problem is to put tariffs on them and hold them to it,” Gerica said.
According to Nungesser, state inspectors have written about 26-hundred citations for businesses mislabeling their seafood as domestic.
But he says so far, no fines have been collected.
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