Opening the shrimpgates

A seafood fraud scandal moved across the coastal South this spring like a bad weather system.

Vigilant observers in fishing towns knew a gale was coming. SeaD Consulting, the Houston-based shrimp testing firm which coordinated the restaurant assessment blitz that stretched from Corpus Christi, Texas to Wilmington, North Carolina, is a public relations juggernaut. A week or two before revealing the results of rapid genetic tests designed to distinguish wild-caught domestic shrimp from farmed imports, the company would tease its findings to area media outlets, cautioning that it had uncovered disturbing rates of fraud elsewhere.