August 29, 2018 — Canadian consumers forking out for seafood are not getting what they pay for. What masquerades as sea bass, cod or wild salmon could be a far cheaper catfish, pollock or even a fish dubbed “the laxative of the sea”, according to a national report from advocacy organization Oceana Canada.
That poses a serious risk to consumers’ pockets — and public health.
Roughly 44 per cent of fish were incorrectly labelled, the report found. What’s more, 60 per cent of the roughly 400 samples collected from retailers in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax were found to carry potential health risks.
Instead of butterfish, consumers have been eating escolar — an oily fish that has been called “the laxative of the sea” and can cause diarrhea, vomiting and other stomach problems — which is banned in several countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Italy. Escolar was also a substitute for white tuna.
This, researchers say, is rampant seafood fraud, defined as any activity that misrepresents the seafood being purchased.
August 17, 2018 — For years, fish sellers in China have labeled something other than salmon as salmon, according to a local media report that outraged sushi lovers across the country.
Now, Chinese fish authorities have responded: That’s perfectly O.K. with them.
Chinese regulators said this week that rainbow trout can be sold as salmon, according to new standards set by a government-affiliated fish association and 13 commercial fisheries. To justify the change in definition, officials cited biology: Salmon and rainbow trout belong to the same fishy family. They also required sellers to note the exact type of fish elsewhere on the label.
Still, the fuzzy definition touched a nerve in a country with a long history of food labeling issues and a vast population of increasingly sophisticated consumers. Thousands took to the internet to blast regulators for lowering food standards instead of fixing the issue. Some declared they would never eat salmon again.
Even patrons at a sushi restaurant said that they could no longer trust salmon enough to eat it raw.
July 27, 2018 –An Associated Press investigation revealed in June that the New York-based seafood distributor Sea to Table was mislabeling product origins and misleading its customers. The company and its owner Sean Dimin defended the errors as accidental — a result of mix-ups, miscommunications and honest mistakes as well as information falsified farther down the chain of supply. Dimin pledged to address the claims quickly and terminate relationships with suppliers that had mislabeled their seafood.
This week AP reports on four former Sea to Table employees who say they raised concerns about mislabeling and other deceptive marketing practices long before the AP investigation, but they were ignored or silenced.
Sea to Table’s model is to deliver local, traceable, high-quality seafood. This is a manageable business model. Community supported fisheries, direct marketers and small fish shops around the country deliver these promises daily.
But the model is not yet scalable, and that is precisely what Sea to Table’s ex-workers point out. They allege that Dimin turned a blind eye to these flaws as he tried to keep pace with the company’s growth.
Despite the bad press and significant losses after the June report — Dimin told the AP Sea to Table had lost more than 50 percent of its revenue and conducted layoffs to keep operating — the company reportedly predicts its sales will jump from $13 million last year to $70 million in 2020.
July 26, 2018 –A national seafood distributor is defending its reputation amid plummeting sales after the Associated Press found it was not living up to a guarantee that all catch was local, wild, sustainable and traceable.
Sea To Table owner Sean Dimin said most problems identified by the AP were honest mistakes or the result of miscommunication, and some supporters came to his defense. But four former employees said they raised concerns about mislabeling, the blending of imports and deceptive marketing practices years ago, and were ignored or silenced.
In a global seafood industry that is notoriously corrupt, conscientious consumers are increasingly paying top dollar for seafood they can feel good about. The New York-based company attracted clients such as celebrity chef Rick Bayless, meal kit maker HelloFresh, restaurants and universities, promising all fish could be traced to a U.S. dock and sometimes the fisherman who caught it.
Among other things, the AP found Sea To Table was sometimes working with wholesalers that also rely on imports, providing incorrect dock and boat names, selling farmed shellfish, and offering species that were out of season or illegal to catch. The AP also tracked businesses in Sea To Table’s supply chain to labor abuses involving migrant fishermen in foreign waters and destruction of marine life.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Spokesman-Review
July 20, 2018 — Sea to Table founder Sean Dimin has at last responded to the Associated Press expose that reported finding his New York-based seafood source certification company not doing its job, alleging that the news service cut corners in its reporting and failed to deliver a complete picture of his organization’s work.
AP described in its story, published June 13, how it staked out America’s largest fish market, in New York, used time-lapse photography, conducted DNA tests, and interviewed fishermen working on three different continents to raise questions about seafood that was guaranteed by Sea to Table as being sourced locally and/or from companies that employed upstanding practices.
As a result of the article, many of the companies previously participating in the Sea to Table program have left for fear of being associated with the controversy, as they are “more focused on the perception than the truth,” Dimin said in a statement released Wednesday.
July 3, 2018 –On June 15th, the Associated Press released an investigation into Sea to Table, a seafood distributor based in New York, claiming that Sea to Table had misrepresented where some of their seafood had been caught. This case of seafood fraud is particularly troubling as Sea to Table’s main appeal is that they ensure traceability and a clean, sustainable supply chain.
Sea to Table works like this:
Sea to Table partners with domestic fishers, fishing boats, docks, and suppliers to connect them directly to restaurants. Once landed & processed, fish are shipped directly to the chefs who purchase, all facilitated by Sea to Table. This cuts out the traditional fish monger middleman, ensuring a higher price for the fishers and processors, and a fresh, high-quality seafood product for chefs. It also reduces the chances of a fish being mislabeled as the more often a fish changes hands, the more likely it is to be mislabeled.
Encyclopedia Brown and The Case of the Yellowfin Tuna
Sea to Table was a rapidly growing company until the Associated Press found that they sold yellowfin tuna—claimed to be caught off Montauk, NY—that may have been landed elsewhere. The problem comes from one of Sea to Table’s supply partners, Gosman’s, located in Montauk. According to Sea to Table, the tuna sold was supplied by Gosman’s, but had actually been caught in North Carolina (still a sustainable, U.S. fishery). Sea to Table says labeling that tuna as caught off Montauk instead of North Carolina was a simple failure to communicate (and they have apologized), however, the AP did preliminary DNA testing on a piece of tuna in question and claim it is actually from the Indian or Pacific Ocean.
June 25, 2018 — It wasn’t just another Friday in mid-June at Pagano’s Seafood in Norwalk, as the wholesale distributor shipped more than 50,000 pounds of seafood to some 500 customers throughout Connecticut and the tristate region heading into Father’s Day weekend, among the busiest of the year.
As trucks were loaded for deliveries, Kris Drumgold could tick off with ease the ports from which the wholesaler sources its seafood. But with a few exceptions — including the docks of Norwalk where local oyster boats land their hauls — Drumgold and his fellow wholesale and retail buyers in Connecticut must rely on the representations of the suppliers who send them fresh and frozen seafood for redistribution to markets, restaurants and clubs.
In an Associated Press investigation published recently of one New York company claiming to offer only locally sourced seafood, tests determined that at least some of Sea to Table’s catch in fact came from overseas, raising new questions about whether markets and restaurants are being duped in how they describe the fish they sell.
In an open letter to customers, Sea to Table founder Sean Dimin said his company is “addressing these claims quickly” and has terminated its relationship with a supplier.
June 25, 2018 — Hari Pulapaka, chef and owner of the restaurant Cress in Deland, Florida, prides himself on his ability to tell diners the names of the captain and vessel that brought them the seafood on their plate. For the past few years, he has done this with the help of Sea to Table, a flourishing family-owned business beloved in the sustainable food movement for connecting chefs like him to independent, American fisherman.
So when Pulapaka, a member of the Grist 50, recently saw a link in an online forum for like-minded chefs to a recent Associated Press investigation into labor abuses connected to Sea to Table’s suppliers, his response was three words: “Well that sucks.”
“It’s slightly deflating, because then you have to ask yourself who do you trust? How do you go about trusting?” Pulapaka said.
Chefs across the country who care about the sustainability of the seafood they serve are in a bind. It takes diligence to trace where your seafood comes from, and many chefs had relied on Sea to Table — one of the largest distributors of earth-friendly seafood. Last week, the company came under scrutiny when an AP investigation revealed that products it marketed as locally sourced were actually caught as far away as Indonesia by suppliers with a history of labor abuses. One fisherman on a boat that sent fish to a Sea to Table supplier said workers were “treated like slaves,” working without enough food or water while earning $1.50 for a 22-hour day.
“The unimaginable working conditions and horrific treatment of marine life in the international seafood industry must be addressed,” Sea to Table said in a statement released after the investigation was published. “We would have never accepted overseas product fished in this manner.”
June 22, 2018 — A U.S. senator is calling for an investigation into Sea To Table in the wake of a lengthy report by the Associated Press that claimed the company lied about the origins of the seafood it was selling to customers.
Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to both NOAA and the FTC calling for a full investigation into Sea To Table in the wake of the report. The AP’s extensive report included sting operations that captured Sea To Table claiming origins for seafood that couldn’t physically be true, including claims that tuna was sourced from boats that hadn’t left harbor or that species were available fresh despite being out-of-season.
“Sea To Table has violated the public’s trust in seafood by lying about the nature of its product as reliable and sustainable, and by profiting off of threatened fish stocks and enabling human rights violations,” Markey wrote in his letter to NOAA. “These alarming actions, which undermine the commitment to sustainable seafood harvested by fishermen in Massachusetts and around the country, cannot be tolerated.”
Markey also asked NOAA how its Office of Law Enforcement functions, how it monitors Sea to Table and other seafood distributors, and what steps it is going to take in the future to try and prevent other similar instances of mislabeling.
He also called on the FTC to look into whether marketing seafood as local, when it wasn’t, is in violation of FTC regulations.
“Sea To Table’s egregious misconduct not only harms consumer confidence in seafood, it likely violates the Federal Trade Commission Act, necessitating an investigation and potential formal action by the FTC,” Markey wrote.
June 18, 2018 — U.S. Sen. Edward Markey is asking federal agencies to investigate where a leading sustainable seafood distributor actually gets its fish, after an Associated Press investigation found Brooklyn-based Sea To Table was selling tuna labeled as coming from docks where it wasn’t landed and with the names of boats that didn’t catch it.
Here’s how it was supposed to work: Every day chefs and other potential customers get a long list of “Just Landed” seafood identifying what Brooklyn-based Sea To Table can offer from its trusted, waterfront partners — some 60 fishermen and small commercial docks around the country. Chefs order what they want, and the fish is boxed, put on ice and sent via FedEx overnight.
“We send all fish directly from the landing dock to your kitchen,” Sea To Table explained.
The growing world of foodies and conscientious consumers cheered them on. Celebrity chef Rick Bayless signed up. So did Roy’s seafood restaurants, the Chopt salad chain, dozens of universities and even home meal kits like HelloFresh and Sun Basket. The Monterey Bay Aquarium made them a collaborator, James Beard Foundation singled them out.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times