Saving Seafood

Multi-Agency Investigation Cracks Down on Fish Fraud

February 19, 2021 — The following was released by the Better Seafood Board:

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has charged four men for their part in an alleged plot to import mislabeled fish into the United States.  The defendants were arrested yesterday and will appear before a judge today.

“This is a great example of agencies focusing enforcement efforts on fish fraud and having an impact,” said John Petrizzo Director of Operations for Harbor Seafood, Inc. and Chair of the Better Seafood Board. “Here we see the United States Attorney, Department of Homeland Security, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement and USDA’s Inspector General all working together to investigate and prosecute these suspects. Dedicating those kinds of resources to a fish fraud case sends a loud and clear message.”

Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent-in-Charge Peter C. Fitzhugh called the suspects part of a “transnational criminal organization.” The scheme allegedly involved bringing mislabeled fish in from Myanmar and Bangladesh for sale through a company called Asia Foods Distributor Inc. The criminal complaint shows law enforcement tracking mislabeled shipments as far back as 2018. Investigators describe the alleged crime as a “very lucrative scheme.”

“We don’t need new laws or more regulations, we need enforcement and that’s what we are seeing today from these federal agencies,” said Petrizzo. “Hats off to them and their efforts to stamp out fish fraud.”

Oceana going overboard on fish fraud, according to seafood industry group

September 9, 2016 — The National Fisheries Institute (NFI) is calling into question both the findings and motives of the latest fish fraud study by Oceana, a global environmental group. The action marks a break between the two groups since they previously were largely in sync with one another over the worldwide problem of fish fraud, which is where lesser-value species are marketed as higher-value ones.

NFI claims that by finding 20 percent of all seafood mislabeled globally, Oceana’s latest report is both overstating the problem and unnecessarily calling for an expanded regulatory bureaucracy when enforcement of existing laws is all that is needed.

NFI, a trade association representing the seafood industry with a core mission of sustainability, charges that the environmental group has turned to “misleading hyperbole.”

“Mislabeling is fraud and fraud is illegal, period,” reads the NFI statement released on its website. “That’s why NFI members are all required to be members of the Better Seafood Board, the only seafood industry-led economic integrity effort. Our members are at the forefront of getting rid of fish fraud.”

Oceana’s study is misleading because it looked too heavily at commonly mislabeled species, the group asserts.

“Oceana’s focus on the most often mislabeled species distorts its findings by design. It is a common technique that ironically perpetuates a fraud on the readers of these reports,” the NFI statement adds.

Read the full story at Food Safety News