re: Fresh Seafood Sellers are Cheats!

There are a lot of factors that go into weighing fresh shrimp.

First off is the scale. You have to have a legal for trade scale before you can sell anything by the weight. A home scale is not a legal for trade scale. Legal for trade scales are more expensive than your home scales. I want to say even the ones they have at the shrimp lot cost over $150-$200. You also have to have them certified by LA dept of Agriculture - weights and measures division. They come out and test the scale with their own weights to certify that it is accurate. I'm sure most of them in the Westwego shrimp lot have had this done. They are an easy target to get written up since they have so many of them in one spot.

2nd factor is water weight. Shrimp live in water and thus hold a lot of water weight. Shrimp docks or shrimp processors will take out 5-10% for water weight when they buy from shrimpers. Shrimp are dumped in a water tank to ensure they are clean and melt any ice before they go on a conveyor belt and on to the scale. This is an understood thing in the business and this is why a lot of seafood retailers will give you a little extra weight when they sell you shrimp (if they are sitting in water that is).

3rd factor is there are standards for weighing shrimp. Because they retain a lot of water, that water will leak out if sitting out of water in a colander or in a bag of newspaper. I think the standard was only only like 1.5-3 minutes drain time. It's been a while since I read it. So you can't let shrimp sit in a colander for 5-10 minutes and expect it to weight the same as it did when you took it out of the water.