“Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp”

“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” is a popular service announcement that the Ad Council started in 1990. The beginning of the message—“Friends don’t let friends…”—has been much-imitated.
 
The shrimping industry in the Texas Gulf region and throughout the Southern United States has been long been challenged by cheaper, farm-raised foreign shrimp. Gulf shrimp is caught wild and has a briney, iodiney flavor that some favor (and others disafavor).
 
The slogan “Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp” has been popular from South Carolina to Florida to Louisiana and to Texas, dating from at least 2004.
 
   
Ad Council
Drunk Driving Prevention (1983-Present)
Sponsor: U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Volunteer Agency: DDB Worldwide, New York
In 1983 the Ad Council and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (under the U.S. Department of Transportation - U.S. DOT) partnered to launch the Drunk Driving Prevention campaign. Although society’s permissive attitude toward drinking and driving had recently begun to shift, many Americans were still unaware of the magnitude of the problem. At the time drunk drivers were responsible for 50% of automobile fatalities and experts predicted that one out of every two Americans would be involved in an alcohol-related traffic accident in his or her lifetime.
 
The campaign, with its tagline, “Drinking & Driving Can Kill A Friendship,” was originally designed to reach 16-24 year-olds, who accounted for 42% of all fatal alcohol-related car crashes, and inspire personal responsibility to prevent drinking and driving. The public service advertisement (PSA), which emphasized the grave consequences of drinking and driving with a depiction of two glasses crashing into each other, won the 1984 classic CLIO award for best overall ad campaign - commercial or public service. To date, it is one of only a handful of PSAs to have been so honored since 1947.
 
As the years passed, statistics showed that the issue of drunk driving was approaching the forefront of American consciousness. According to an April 1986 Roper poll, 62% of young Americans reported that they were now more conscious of the dangers of drunk driving than they had been previously and 34% refused to drink at all when they were planning to drive. Additionally, the U.S. DOT reported a 25% decrease in the number of drunk drivers killed in traffic accidents between 1980 and 1990.
 
In 1990, new PSAs encouraging friends to intervene in order to prevent a drunk person from getting behind the wheel introduced the tagline, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” This hard-hitting campaign was instrumental in achieving a 10% decrease in alcohol-related fatalities between 1990 and 1991 - the single largest one-year drop in alcohol-related fatalities ever recorded. The tagline went on to become the most recognized anti-drinking and driving slogan in America. Beginning in 1994, the PSAs poignantly illustrated the consequences of letting someone drink and drive by featuring the stories, photographs and home videos of real people who were killed by drunk drivers. 
 
St. Petersburg (FL) Times
Shrimpers seek federal help with foreign threat
They want government-imposed duties on foreign shrimp, and this week they scored a preliminary victory.
By NORA KOCH
Published February 21, 2004
TARPON SPRINGS - Taped to the glass front door of Northside Seafood Market, next to a window sign with the dockside store’s business hours, is a red and white sticker that sums up John Williams cause:
 
“Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp.”
 
1 July 2004, Brownsville (TX) Herald:
Shrimpers discuss industry woes at Brownsville, Texas, hearing.
By Gilberto Salinas, The Brownsville Herald, Texas Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jul. 1—BROWNSVILLE, Texas—The atmosphere at the Brownsville Navigation District’s public hearing Wednesday was easily summarized by bumper stickers on trucks parked outside the event: “Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp.” More than 100 people gathered at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College to voice their concerns over the shrimp crisis, which has been stirred by the cheap imports of farm-raised shrimp and stiff federal regulations. 
 
Dallas (TX) Morning News
Seafood industry on the brink
Louisianians fear hurricanes’ one-two punch may have wiped out a way of life
Author: LEE HANCOCK Staff Writer
Publish Date: September 28, 2005
DELCAMBRE, La. - Shrimp boats bob in the sun-dappled canal, pretty as a tourist postcard, but the quaint scene is all that looks remotely normal in this Cajun fishing village sometimes billed as the “shrimp capital of Louisiana.”
(...)
A cheerfully profane man in a T-shirt that declares “Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp,”
 
American Roads Travel Magazine (Summer 2007)
ST. HELENA ART TRAIL - LOWCOUNTY SOUTH CAROLINA
by Anne Jenkins
(...)
Head on back down Sea Island Pkwy, 3 miles past The Red Paino Too and you’ll see Bradley’s Seafood on the right. Turn up into their drive and buy some of sweet local shrimp. They opened in 1971 and their motto is “Friends don’t let friends buy imported shrimp” and their shrimp is delicious - we take a cooler every time we go there.
(...)
Bradley’s Seafood, 173 James Bradley Drive (on Sea Island Pkwy) (843) 838-2924
     
Fallen Souffle
Jim Carton
December 14th, 2007 06:26
Your combination of shrimp, cheese and grits sound great. One thing I would like to mention though—when I lived in Sneads Ferry, N.C. a popular bumper sticker read, “Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp”. Farm raised, imported shrimp can’t compare to fresh off the trawler, Atlantic, willd caught shrimp.
   
Myrtle Beach (SC) Online
Posted on Sat, May. 03, 2008
BOB BESTLER ON THE LOOSE
Shrimpers need our support
I have a red bumper sticker on my pickup:
 
“Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp.”
 
The message probably doesn’t mean much to most people - and, frankly, for the past year it didn’t mean all that much to me.
 
It seemed a small way to support the main industry of my new hometown, McClellanville, one of the most important shrimping villages on the East Coast.
 
But recently, as I read a sobering report about working conditions in the $13 billion global shrimp industry, I realized the larger meaning behind that bumper sticker, intentional or not.
 
The report described the devastating work conditions in Third World countries that provide low-priced shrimp to the world’s marketplaces, and particularly to the United States, which consumes about $4 billion in shrimp annually.
 
“The Degradation of Work: The True Cost of Shrimp,” by Solidarity Center, a human rights advocate supported by the AFL-CIO, describes shrimp processing plants in Thailand and Bangladesh.
 
The two countries supplied about 430 million pounds of shrimp to the United States in 2006; Thailand alone accounted for roughly one third of all imported shrimp sold and eaten in this country’s stores and restaurants.
 
Austin (TX) American-Statesman
Gulf shrimp still the star on South Padre plates
Fewer shrimpers can compete with shrimp farms.
By Helen Anders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Order shrimp in a restaurant here and you know exactly what you’re going to get: fresh shrimp that came out of the Gulf of Mexico.
 
“We use exclusively wild-caught Gulf shrimp,” says Zeke Garrett, manager of popular Blackbeard’s restaurant on the island, where favorites include Shrimp Three Ways — three each fried, grilled and blackened.
 
“You know, there’s a saying here: Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp,” he says.
 
I’m a friend of Zeke’s, and he’s a mighty convincing guy. But I don’t need any persuading to stick with Gulf shrimp. I like the way they taste — a bit briney and iodiney. Their flavor stands up well to the myriad sauces (citrus, barbecue, cheese) and coatings (from Parmesan to pecan) applied to them.