SavingSeaFood - Difficult to combat, rampant seafood mislabeling threatens market by cheating consumers

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Difficult to combat, rampant seafood mislabeling threatens market by cheating consumers

Fraud and mislabeling are rife in the seafood trade and, depending on the species, consumers may unknowingly buy substituted fish between 25 and 70 percent of the time, according to a new report by the environmental group Oceana.

“We import about 84 percent of the seafood we eat. You go to a seafood restaurant and maybe two or three things on the menu are local,” said Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana.

Meanwhile, skinless fish fillets are everywhere in the American market, where whole cleaned fish – or round fish as they are called in the trade – have nearly disappeared over the past generation.

That all makes fraud easier to pull off – and profitable for the mislabelers, Hirshfield said.

Read the complete story from Asbury Park Press.

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