December 17, 2018 — That wild sockeye salmon in the refrigerated aisle may be straight from the fish farm, New York’s attorney general said in a report released Friday.
The report from Attorney General Barbara Underwood found that more than one-fourth of the seafood her office sampled in a statewide supermarket survey was mislabeled, typically as a more expensive or more sustainably fished species.
“We’re taking enforcement action, and consumers should be alert and demand that their supermarket put customers first by taking serious steps to ensure quality control at their seafood counters,” Underwood said.
The report was based on DNA testing of fish samples performed by the Ocean Genome Legacy Center, an academic laboratory at Northeastern University.
It found that farmed salmon was frequently sold as wild, and fish sold as red snapper or lemon sole were more often different varieties.
The investigation is not the first to uncover fish fraud.
A 2017 study from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University found that almost half the sushi from 26 Los Angeles restaurants that they tested between 2012 and 2015 was mislabeled.
An Associated Press investigation into seafood fraud published in June linked one national fish distributor to widespread mislabeling and other deceitful practices.