Increased understanding of the factors that influence U.S. consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) is critical as it may help restore the economic profitability of the catfish business. Hence, a consumer survey was conducted in 2022 to learn consumers’ preferences and WTP in ten U.S. Southern states, including Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Florida, and Virginia (n=1,360). Preliminary results indicated that most of the surveyed participants (62%) prefer to consume farm-raised catfish products. They also informed us that catfish’s source matters when purchasing it from the market. They mostly buy the catfish from the wild-caught (37%), followed by farm-raised (33%) and imported catfish (8%), while the rest were quite indifferent about this matter. Most of these participants prefer to purchase the family-sized catfish fillet packet (4-8 lb), followed by economy size (1-4 lb), large size (8-15 lb), and extra-large size packet (>15 lb) (Figure 1). While asking about their seafood preferences, most participants wanted to see more shrimp items, followed by catfish, tilapia, crawfish, and saltwater fish in the market. With regards to WTP, the majority of the participants want to pay the additional premium price, ranging from 1 to 76 cents per pound, if the seafood products contain information related to USA origin labeling, followed by US-farm raised and certified organic labeling. However, the surveyed participants want to pay fewer premium prices for seafood products containing genetically modified organisms (GMO) labeling.