Konsumer protection at its dumbest

I had dinner at Koko's (a favorite local Japanese restaurant) tonight, and, as usual, ordered sushi. When I looked at the menu, my usual imitation crab was labeled "Krab stick." This struck me as very odd, since it was previously spelled correctly. Thinking they redid the menu and had a typo, I pointed it out to the waitress.

After my meal, she informed me that the restaurant indeed intended to spell it that way--it seems the state of Florida prohibits using the proper spelling of "crab" for imitation crab. Hence "krab."

Not wanting to dupe consumers is all well and good, but I think most people would not assume misspelling meant that the product was artificial or imitation on that basis alone. "Lether" wouldn't make me think "plastic," "golde" wouldn't make me think "less than 10K, if not zero gold," and "Teevo" wouldn't make me think "DVR but not TiVo." If I thought the crab stick were crab, "krab" wouldn't make me think otherwise.

Of course, "crab stick" is--at least at the restaurants I've been to--sushi code for the imitation crab, anyway. Changing "crab stick" to "krab stick" doesn't make that clear to someone who doesn't know what a "crab stick" is to begin with. And, in any case, the waitress didn't know why it was misspelled until she asked someone else--if the whole point was to call attention to the fact that it was imitation crab, the misspelling wouldn't have done the trick, since I only found out why it was "krab" when I had already eaten the sushi and was about to pay the check.

News flash to the state of Florida, department of health or whatever: insisting that imitation crab be called "krab" does not protect consumers--it needlessly makes innocent Japanese restauranteurs look illiterate. Don't state inspectors have better things to do than meddle with orthography?