Saving Seafood

Getting to the bottom of the ‘mislabelling’ issue

February 11, 2016 — Does your livelihood depend on seafood production? If so, it would naturally follow that mislabelling of that seafood after it leaves your hands is of utmost concern to you.

Wild capture and aquaculture sources of global seafood production share this concern about their product, but what are studies released late last year on seafood mislabelling and fraud really telling us?

Improved labeling

 

The most recent study carried out on seafood mislabelling in the European Atlantic region suggests the recent trend is downwards and one of the main causes is the widespread media attention paid to the issue in the last four years. This has led to higher consumer awareness and improved labelling in fish markets trying to save their reputation. Also contributing to recently measured low rates of mislabelling are the strict new seafood labelling laws set out by the EC/EU in December 2014. The study led by Labelfish scientist Stefano Mariani published in December 2015 claimed an overall mislabelling rate of just 4.9 % of 1,265 samples taken in 19 European cities.

The 285 samples taken in Brussels from March to July in 2015 in search of fraud is Oceana’s first foray into European sampling of seafood. The study – leading to headlines last November claiming 33.9% seafood fraud of fish in Brussels – was in fact the ocean advocacy group’s first study outside America exploring what they most often refer to as seafood fraud.

Read the full story from World Fishing & Aquaculture

EU looks into reports of fake fish labeling in Brussels

November 3, 2015 — BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union is looking into reports that cheap seafood is often mislabeled as choice fish in some of the Belgian capital’s fine restaurants and even in EU cafeterias.

The Oceana environmental group said Tuesday it found that 31.8 percent of seafood it tested in and around EU institutions in Brussels was a different fish than what was labeled on the menu. In the cafeterias of the EU, which sets fishery policies for the 28-nation bloc, the total amount of falsely labeled fish stood at 38 percent.

“We take this very seriously,” EU spokesman Alexander Winterstein said of the report.

Oceana said 95 percent of what was labeled Bluefin tuna – a fatty, sublime sushi favorite – was actually a less expensive species, served to make a hefty profit. In 13 percent of the cases, cod was also mislabeled and people sometimes were fed pangasius instead, a freshwater fish farmed in southeast Asia.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald

 

Virginia, Maryland legislators fighting fake Chesapeake Bay blue crab meat

September 16, 2015 — A group of federal legislators from Virginia and Maryland urged the White House this week to do more to curb the mislabeling of Chesapeake Bay blue crab.

In a letter Monday, U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Rep. Rob Wittman from Virginia and Sen. Barbara Mikulski from Maryland applauded President Barack Obama for launching the Presidential Task Force to Combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Seafood Fraud earlier this year.

But, they said, its draft recommendations don’t go far enough to protect area watermen from dishonest people willing to import foreign crabmeat and repackage it as Atlantic or Chesapeake Bay blue crab.

Federal agents are investigating allegations that Casey’s Seafood Inc. in Newport News did just that. No charges have been filed in connection with the case, but DNA tests on several of Casey’s Seafood products contained mixtures of Atlantic blue crab and cheaper alternatives native to foreign waters. All of the products were labeled “Product of the USA.”

“This deceptive labeling misleads consumers and threatens the livelihood of the watermen in our states,” reads the letter, which indicates Virginia’s blue crab fishery generates nearly $30 million in total fishing revenue for watermen each year. Maryland’s blue crabs generate over $58 million annually.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot