July 23, 2012 — When you order snapper, grouper or white tuna at your local restaurant, market or sushi emporium, there is almost a one-in-three chance you will be served tilapia or some less expensive fish instead, warn researchers who sampled 60 South Florida businesses.
Most alarming was one instance where a fish sold as grouper turned out to be king mackerel, a species federal and state authorities advise women of childbearing age not to eat because of high mercury levels that can harm a fetus.
According to the results of a study released today by the conservation group Oceana, the fish most often mislabeled was red snapper. In six of seven samples from restaurants and markets, a consumer got something else.
"Given that Florida is a state that tests regularly, I was wondering if we would find any fraud at all," said marine scientist Kimberly Warner, chief author of the study. "Why in the world would people think they can get away with this? That it's happening is quite shocking."
Among the most egregious offenders were sushi restaurants. White tuna was mislabeled 100 percent of the time in the 31 sushi venues sampled, as was whitefish and yellowtail, the survey found.
In sushi, a common substitute for white tuna or whitefish was escolar, also called snake mackerel, another fish with a health warning. "It can cause severe gastrointestinal problems,'' said Warner.
Based in Washington D.C. and with an office in Fort Lauderdale, Oceana is the largest international organization focused solely on ocean conservation. For this study, it sampled seafood mainly in the Fort Lauderdale and Miami areas, but included samples from Palm Beach and Monroe counties. The investigation was part of a national Stop Seafood Fraud campaign.
Fish fraud is worse elsewhere. Oceana found South Florida had about a 20 percent lower rate than Boston and Los Angeles.
Floridians eat twice as much seafood on average as others in the U.S., studies have found. And with an appetite like that, fraud has long been on the menu, according to Warner.
In the mid-1980s, the state's Department of Consumer Affairs revealed widespread seafood mislabeling in stores and processing plants. In 1988, a Sun Sentinel investigation found that less expensive snappers were routinely substituited for red snapper.
In the mid-2000s, grouper fraud was prevalent in Florida and the Gulf, when Vietnamese catfish was often substituted.
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