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The Port of Delcambre and Delcambre Direct Seafood program have introduced the first product in the state carrying the Certified Authentic Louisiana Wild Seafood label.
(Courtesy of Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board)
The first Louisiana seafood to carry the new Certified Authentic Louisiana Wild Seafood label is a Vermilion Bay Sweet White Shrimp gumbo pack. State seafood industry officials hope the certification will spur business for Louisiana products.
"This is the first of what will be many certified Louisiana products," said Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. "It will guarantee that it has been caught by someone from Louisiana, and landed, processed and packaged in Louisiana, and so, people will know that they are supporting Louisiana.
"The hope is that soon you'll also see it for crab, for oysters, finfish and crawfish too."
More and more local restaurants also are expected to have the certification logo on their menus.
The announcement came on Tuesday, the day after the Terrebonne Basin and Vermilion Bay opened their inshore shrimping seasons. Barataria Bay will not open until May 20, and Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne aren't opening until May 27.
The one-pound bags of machine-peeled, vacuum-packed and frozen Vermilion Bay Sweet white shrimp will sell for about $8 and there will be 70 to 90 shrimp per bag, according to Tom Hymel, director of the Louisiana Direct Seafood project that helps fishers sell their catch directly to local consumers. The certification announcement also marks the first push for the frozen gumbo-sized shrimp packages, which while sold in Acadiana markets, also soon will available to metro New Orleans and national consumers online at CajunGrocer.com.
"Our Vermillion Bay shrimp has a special flavor profile that has to have one of the most flavorful shrimp out of the Gulf of Mexico," said Hymel, who is an LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant agent. "The Vermillion Bay estuary is fed by the Atchafalaya River and has none of that iodine flavor at all, just this nice sweet flavor-popping taste."
The Vermilion Bay Sweet product also contains no sodium tripolyphosphate - STP - or sodium bisulfite, chemicals often used in raw and frozen to keep in moisture lost during the thawing process and to prevent shell discoloration.
Hymel said the gumbo-sized shrimp pack is an attempt to demonstrate to others in the industry how local processing plants can take the best of what they have in their areas, certify it and market it as it's own unique, "boutique" product.
"This is a demonstration process to show the industry what the opportunities are out there," Hymel said.
The first product released under the Vermilion Bay Sweet brand was larger white shrimp - about 12 shrimp in a one and a half-pound bag that sells for between $18 and $20. That product, though, was peeled and deveined by hand, which made it labor intensive and harder to sell to a larger market.
"The demand for it is really high, higher than we can meet," said Hymel. It currently only is for sale in higher-end meat stores in the Lafayette and New Iberia area.
Before Vermilion Bay Sweet, local shrimp typically were just sold in 5-pound boxes or 50-pound cases, essentially just for the restaurant trade.
"As we grow and the demand for this expands to other regions of the state, we will start looking at markets in New Orleans area," Hymel said.
Rene LeBreton, a state Wildlife and Fisheries program manager who helped put rules in place for the certification program, said that his agency, along with the Department of Health and Hospitals and the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, will monitor applications for the program to help ensure that everything labeled Certified Louisiana Seafood is in fact from the state.
Wildlife and Fisheries officially launched the Louisiana Certified Seafood Program in October but this is the first product to receive the label. It's pitched as a way to brand Louisiana seafood across the globe similar to the geographically-based branding of "Maine Lobster'' and "Idaho Potatoes.''
It is a direct result of recommendations from the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force, created by Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2009, to establish rules and guidelines throughout the seafood supply chain enabling the state to make sure that Louisiana Certified Seafood is caught in the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf Coast state waters by licensed Louisiana fishermen, brought in from Louisiana docks and processed and packaged in state.
Louisiana fishers who are interested can register for the program online at certified.louisianaseafood.com.
The Louisiana Certified Seafood label is seen as a way to create a unified brand whereby the state can promote all participants under one logo and use state advertising money, especially in the wake of the BP oil spill, to create more of a dent through band recognition and differentiation, eventually in the global marketplace.