South Carolina legislators want diners to know whether their shrimp was actually caught along the Palmetto State's coast under a bill the Senate approved Thursday, April 30, 2026. In this photo, shrimping boats line the bayou in Dulac, Louisiana. (File photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Louisiana Illuminator)
COLUMBIA — When diners at a South Carolina restaurant order shrimp advertised as local, that should be their guarantee the crustaceans were caught off this state’s coast, senators said in passing a bill meant to cut down on what some called shrimp fraud.
Under the bill the Senate approved on a voice vote Thursday, restaurants and bars could tell patrons their shrimp is local only if they’re actually harvested off South Carolina’s shores.
Restaurateurs who lie about their shrimp’s origins could face a fine of up to $1,000 or up to six months in prison for a first offense, then a fine of up to $5,000 and up to two years in prison if it happened again. That wouldn’t apply if the wholesaler selling the shrimp misrepresented where the food came from.
The Senate’s version varied from the House bill, which required that restaurants specify only the country the shrimp came from. Under that version, restaurants could advertise “local” American shrimp without clarifying that it was caught in a different part of the country.
That didn’t go far enough toward making sure people know what they’re eating, senators said.
“To me, I don’t think you have to know if it’s China or if it’s Brazil,” Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, a Murrells Inlet Republican, said during a committee meeting earlier this week.
What’s more important, Goldfinch said, is knowing if the shrimp was caught in South Carolina or not. In the Lowcountry, some restaurants and bars claim to serve locally caught shrimp and seafood that didn’t actually come from the state’s waters, Goldfinch said.
“You’re paying for something you think it is, and it’s not,” Goldfinch said. “Even on such a small scale as shrimp, it’s fraud. You’re defrauding the purchaser, and I find that to be abhorrent, especially for something you’re eating and consuming.”
Wholesalers, grocery stores and other places selling raw shrimp would still have to disclose the shrimp’s country of origin under the Senate version of the bill. That mirrors the federal Country of Origin Labeling Act, a 2005 law also known as the COOL Act, but is meant to give state officials the power to enforce that rule.
As is, “the FBI is not coming down and investigating fraudulent shrimp,” Goldfinch said.
The bill applies only to restaurants that choose to advertise their shrimp as local. It doesn’t require restaurants to disclose where their shrimp comes from.
Requiring a restaurant to specify on its menu the country of origin for a dish might cause chaos if a restaurant had to switch wholesalers, and the new one sold shrimp from a different country. That would force the owners to replace menus with a new location, said Sen. Michael Johnson, who proposed the changes to the bill.
Along with giving diners assurances they’re digging into dishes with local shrimp, the bill is meant to help local shrimpers sell their goods to restaurants, Johnson said. Under existing law, a restaurateur could buy seafood from elsewhere and still say it’s local.
“We have the best shrimp in the world,” the Tega Cay Republican said Thursday. “This is going to make sure that a shrimp harvested in South Carolina waters is the only thing that can be called local.”
The Senate’s vote sent the bill back to the House, which can decide whether to agree on the changes and send it to the governor’s desk or negotiate the differences.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
