Saving Seafood

Revealed: seafood fraud happening on a vast global scale

March 15, 2021 — A Guardian Seascape analysis of 44 recent studies of more than 9,000 seafood samples from restaurants, fishmongers and supermarkets in more than 30 countries found that 36% were mislabelled, exposing seafood fraud on a vast global scale.

Many of the studies used relatively new DNA analysis techniques. In one comparison of sales of fish labelled “snapper” by fishmongers, supermarkets and restaurants in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, researchers found mislabelling in about 40% of fish tested. The UK and Canada had the highest rates of mislabelling in that study, at 55%, followed by the US at 38%.

Sometimes the fish were labelled as different species in the same family. In Germany, for example, 48% of tested samples purporting to be king scallops were in fact the less coveted Japanese scallop. Of 130 shark fillets bought from Italian fish markets and fishmongers, researchers found a 45% mislabelling rate, with cheaper and unpopular species of shark standing in for those most prized by Italian consumers.

Other substitutes were of endangered or vulnerable species. In one 2018 study, nearly 70% of samples from across the UK sold as snapper were a different fish, from an astounding 38 different species, including many reef‐dwelling species that are probably threatened by habitat degradation and overfishing.

Read the full story at The Guardian

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.”

Subway fighting back against “fake tuna” lawsuit

February 1, 2021 — Subway is vigorously defending the tuna is uses in its sandwiches and wraps after a class action lawsuit filed in late January claimed that the massive sandwich chain’s sandwiches do not contain any of the fish.

Subway’s tuna products contain “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, [which] have been blended together by (Subway) to imitate the appearance of tuna,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed on 21 January in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Legal Newsline reported.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fake-seafood producers are pushing back against laws requiring accurate labeling

March 18, 2020 — Genetically tweaked salmon that grow three times faster than normal fish. Fillets grown in labs from fish cells. Now plant-based seafoods such as “vegan shrimp,” or “Toona,” are gaining footholds in the marketplace – and confusing customers.

A new study by FoodMinds for the National Fisheries Institute showed that about 40 percent of consumers believed plant-based imitations contain actual seafood. Up to 60 percent thought the products had similar nutritional content as real fish. Still, fake-seafood producers are pushing back against more accurate labeling, claiming without any evidence that customers know what they are getting.

“We have to ensure that the labels are educating people about something as simple as what’s in the package. A lot of these plant-based alternative makers have even suggested that they have the ‘first amendment right’ to call their products whatever they want. And that’s simply not the case,” said Gavin Gibbons, NFI vice president for communications.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Study details mislabeling of North Carolina shrimp

September 10, 2019 — A third of shrimp labeled “local” wild shrimp in North Carolina was actually imported farmed shrimp, a new study found.

A forensics sciences class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill obtained shrimp samples from 60 grocery stores and seafood markets across the state, and found that 35 percent mislabeled local shrimp at least once. That is consistent with the mislabeling rate on shrimp nationwide, the students wrote in the article published on BioRxiv.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Are these shrimp actually local? Falsely labeled seafood coming to forefront in North Carolina.

August 30, 2019 — Seafood may be labeled as local from North Carolina, but often it actually comes from Asian ponds and arrives infused with harmful supplements, according to a new study.

A third of the shrimp marked as harvested from North Carolina waters likely was farm raised in a foreign country with fewer laws and oversight, according to a new study by the University of North Carolina.

Members of the study group bought 106 shrimp from 60 vendors, including 14 in Dare County and 15 in Hyde County. DNA tests determined the species.

The study highlights a practice where companies falsely label foreign seafood as local to sell at higher prices, double the amount in some cases.

“Consumers deserve to know what they’re getting,” said Glenn Skinner, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association. “We feel strongly this should not be going on.”

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Seafood fraud a hot topic at US restaurant show

May 21, 2019 — Seafood fraud is a hot topic at the ongoing National Restaurant Show, taking place from 18 to 21 May in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Celebrity chefs Barton Seaver, Rick Bayless, and Andrew Zimmern all touched on the topic during public appearances at the show, as did executives from several top foodservice companies.

“The seafood industry as a whole is ill-served and everyone loses when seafood fraud happens,” Barton Seaver, a chef, author, and founder of the Coastal Culinary Academy, told SeafoodSource at the event, which is the largest U.S. restaurant show.

Seaver spoke on a panel about seafood mislabeling and sustainability along with Bayless, who is the chef and owner of Frontera Grill and other restaurants, and Josephine Theal, director of category management for food and hospital management firm Delaware North.

“We as operators create an environment in which fraud can profit,” Seaver said. “If I as a chef am only willing to buy cod, then I’ve created a situation where pollock needs to become cod,” Seaver said. Some restaurants are okay with buying the “flaky white fish of the day” and labeling it “cod,” Seaver added.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Science on your side: The trappings of fish fraud

April 18, 2019 — Seafood fraud and mislabeled seafood is a permanent topic in the sustainable fisheries space and has been driving the demands for product traceability. Since 2011, Oceana has led the discourse on fish fraud by publishing sixteen reports on the subject.

Oceana Canada’s 2018 report exposed some important shortcomings in the Canadian seafood system and offered constructive, achievable mandates for reducing seafood fraud domestically, but the study collected data from a biased sample and only presented results that supported a narrative of rampant fraudulence.

Oceana collects seafood samples at restaurants and retail outlets, DNA tests them, then matches the DNA results to government labeling guidelines. The sampling focused specifically on cod, halibut, snapper, tuna, salmon and sole because these species historically, “have the highest rates of species substitution.” This nonrandom sampling is consistent with previous seafood fraud studies from Oceana.

Of the 382 seafood samples tested in Canada, 168 (44 percent) were found to be mislabeled.

None of the red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus), yellowtail or butterfish tested was appropriately labeled. Tuna was mislabeled 41 percent of the time, halibut 34 percent, cod 32 percent and salmon 18 percent.

Fundamental to the interpretation of the Oceana Canada 2018 study’s results is the understanding that the samples were selected to find fraud, not to measure the actual extent of fraud across the entire seafood supply chain. Oceana disclosed this in the report. However the press release it issued for this report, and subsequent headlines from other news sources, such as “At least one quarter of the seafood you buy is a lie” from the site IFL Science, created a different narrative.

Aside from the sampling criticisms, the analysis of specific species was especially flawed.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

The fish you’re eating in London might not be what it’s labelled

April 16, 2019 — When biology professor Jennifer McDonald got the DNA results back from her students’ experiment on fish, a high number of the fish were not what was said on the label.

As part of a class experiment at Fanshawe College, her students were sent to grocery stores and sushi restaurants in London to collect fish samples.

The class extracted the DNA and compared how many samples were actually what they claimed to be.

Of the 16 samples, they were able to sequence nine of them due to varied success rates.

Seven of the nine were misidentified, McDonald said.

“Yeah, it was a pretty high number,” she said.

A piece of fish that was labelled as red snapper came back as tilapia, something McDonald said happens all the time.

“That really wasn’t surprising. It was disappointing but not surprising,” she said. “Same with a piece of fish that was supposed to be white tuna. That is very often actually escolar and mislabelled as white tuna.”

What did surprise McDonald was when tilapia was passed off as red tuna.

“A fish like tuna has a very characteristic taste it has a very characteristic texture and for a place to actually be fooling people into thinking that they’re eating tuna when they’re really being served tilapia was really really surprising,” she said.

Read the full story at CBC News

MSC research counters findings of other mislabeling studies

March 26, 2019 — A new Marine Stewardship Council study has found mislabeling of its certified seafood is lower than the average of several other recent studies, which claim to have detected seafood mislabeling rates as high as 30 percent.

MSC’s expansive analysis of 1,402 MSC-certified fish products from 18 countries found that fewer than 1 percent of MSC-labeled seafood products were mislabeled.

The results were published in the journal Current Biology.

“There is widespread concern over the vulnerability of seafood supply chains to deliberate species mislabelling and fraud. In the past, this has included some of the most loved species such as cod being substituted by farmed catfish, which can seriously undermine consumer trust and efforts to maintain sustainable fisheries,” the lead of author of the paper, the MSC’s Jaco Barendse, said in an MSC press release.

The MSC’s ecolabeling and Chain of Custody program is an effective deterrent for systematic and deliberate species substitution and fraud, the organization said.

In the new study, the largest and most comprehensive assessment of MSC-labeled products, MSC worked with laboratories of the TRACE Wildlife Forensics Network and SASA’s (Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture) Wildlife DNA Forensic unit to employ DNA barcoding.

Of the 1,402 seafood products tested, 1,389 were labeled correctly and 13 (0.92 percent) were not. Mislabeled products were found in fresh and frozen pre-packed products and in restaurants, mainly in Western Europe, with one case in the U.S. All cases of mislabeling were identified in whitefish (such as cod, hake, and hoki) and flatfish products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source