I had a "Bubba Gump" moment while on vacation in Louisiana last week.

I ate fried shrimp, pickled shrimp, shrimp and grits, shrimp gumbo, a shrimp po-boy sandwich, shrimp carpaccio, shrimp jambalaya, and maybe more shrimp that I've forgotten. And, as far as I was told, all of it was wild-caught in the Gulf of Mexico.

I found out that farmed, imported shrimp is a touchy subject in that neck of the woods.

"Friends don't let friends eat imported seafood," Poppy Tucker, a New Orleans cooking school instructor, told students in her gumbo-making demonstration. Billboards along the highway advise drivers to ask for Louisiana seafood. Judy Walker, food editor at the New Orleans-based Times-Picayune, told me that she saw a woman down to her last food stamp dollars who still insisted on buying Gulf shrimp.

But what about the rest of the country?

Shrimp has become America's most popular seafood, with canned tuna in second place and salmon third place. But more than 90 percent of shrimp isn't caught along the U.S. coast; it's grown in fish farms in countries such as China, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil and Ecuador.

I found that out when I attended a "Shrimp School" hosted by Market Street Grill and Contessa Premium Foods a few weeks ago. Contessa imports the shrimp served in Gastronomy Inc.'s Market Street and Oyster Bar restaurants, and it has a line of convenience meals sold in supermarkets.

Ed Munson of Contessa said there isn't enough wild-caught American shrimp to meet consumer demand. He said that Contessa's seafood comes from Vietnam and Thailand and that the company goes to great lengths to ensure a safe, sustainable product and does extensive testing for chemicals, drug residue and contaminants.

I know that Gastronomy's prides itself on the quality of its seafood and that chef Ty Frederickson checks out the sources thoroughly when buying it.

So this makes for a political dining dilemma. Since foreign shrimp farms got under way in the 1980s, this crustacean has gone from being a luxury to all-you-can-eat special in chain restaurants.

Farmed imports have definitely made shrimp more affordable and accessible to those who don't live near the Southern coastline. But there's the concern that the imports are squeezing out the American shrimpers, who can't catch wild shrimp as cheaply as a foreign counties can farm it.

Several prominent New Orleans chefs told me they insist on using domestic shrimp for this reason and because they feel it has better taste and texture.