October 22, 2007

 

Florida investigators go after the "Big Fish" in fake fish investigations
 

 

After a year of investigations restaurants who allegedly supplied fake fish to customers, the Florida Attorney General's Office has expanded its fake grouper investigation to include the wholesalers who supplied it.

 

Sysco Food Services-West Florida, one of the largest food suppliers in the state, was ordered to turn over documents and records of all fish products bought and sold in 2006 to aid investigation.

 

The food supplier was suspected of supplying several restaurants with frozen "grouper" imports that turned out to be cheaper species.

 

Sysco-West Florida president Carl Cannova said his company never knowingly sold fake grouper.

 

The company has already turned over the documents, requested via subpoena last month, and is cooperating fully with authorities, he said.

 

Sysco occasionally samples grouper imports and will not buy from importers who did not provide authentic fish, he said.

 

The state also issued subpoenas for the records of eight smaller distributors who supplied fish that turned out to be cheaper species than initially claimed.

 

Grouper is prized by diners for its mild flavor and flaky meat. Florida is known for grouper because as it is caught in the coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

 

However, seventy different species of grouper are imported into the US, including Asian grouper which sells at half the cost of the groupers caught in Florida.

 

Several of the restaurants have already paid civil penalties of up to US$5,000 under the Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

 

Sandi Copes, spokeswoman for Attorney General Bill McCollom, said Sysco is the primary focus of the current investigations, because of its size.

 

The larger suppliers may be indicative of industry trends, she said.

 

The fake grouper issue was sparked off last year in August last year, when the St. Petersburg Times published DNA tests on grouper from 11  restaurants in which six turned out to be other cheaper species such as catfish.

 

The Attorney General's Office opened an investigation and tested 17 restaurants, finding an even higher rate of fake fish.

 

Some of the nongrouper, like the Asian catfish, represents deliberate substitution. Other fish, like much of the Sysco-supplied "grouper," are species that could have been misclassified as they live in the same waters. Fake groupers are hard to identify as they can sometimes arrive in the form of fillets. DNA tests had to be done to verify the species.

 

Many restaurants that sold fake grouper said they had invoices saying what they bought was grouper and they had no way of identifying the species, which is why the state's investigation has expanded to include "the big fish" - suppliers.