The Chinese Communist Party has allowed poisonous fentanyl to pour into the United States and encouraged Chinese businesses to lie, cheat and steal in American marketplaces.

Louisiana crawfish farmers, for example, have struggled to compete with Chinese producers that ignore the environmental and safety regulations that American producers must follow. Under President Biden, regulators only inspected 1% of all seafood imports. In turn, China could sell its crawfish—which are often loaded with unsafe levels of antibiotics—at a much cheaper price than the higher-quality American product.

Representatives Mike Ezell (MS-04), Julia Letlow (LA-05), and Troy Carter (LA-02) today introduced the Safer Shrimp Imports Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at tightening federal inspection standards for imported shrimp and protecting American consumers and domestic seafood producers.

Imported shrimp accounts for roughly 90% of the shrimp consumed in the United States, much of which comes from countries with weak food safety standards and inadequate oversight of harmful contaminants such as antibiotics, pesticides, and bacteria.

Al Scramuzza, the flamboyant seafood pioneer known as the “Crawfish King” who helped make the mudbug a staple of Louisiana cuisine, died Sunday at his home in Metairie after a brief illness. He was 97.

Scramuzza was the founder of Seafood City, a sprawling seafood market that once took up an entire city block on North Broad Street in Mid-City and became one of the largest seafood operations in the Gulf South.