July 25, 2012

About 31% of US seafood wrongly labelled

About 31% of seafood in South Florida, US have been revealed by Oceana to be mislabelled, according to reports.

The green group's DNA testing confirmed that nearly one-third of the 96 seafood samples obtained from 60 retail outlets, including grocery stores, restaurants and sushi venues, were mislabelled based on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines.

"Our results suggest that South Floridians may be receiving a completely different fish than what they're paying for," said Dr Kimberly Warner, report author and senior scientist at Oceana. "Not only does seafood fraud cheat consumers and hurt honest seafood businesses, it also puts our health at risk and undermines efforts to eat sustainably."

Continued efforts by local and state authorities to combat seafood fraud over the past thirty years have failed to keep mislabelling rates below 15%-31%. Oceana's investigation targeted species with regional significance and those found to be mislabelled from previous studies, including red and yellowtail snapper, grouper, wild salmon, yellowtail and white tuna.

The report's key findings include: fraud was detected in half of the 14 different types of fish collected; sushi venues had the highest proportion of mislabelled samples (58%); all of the white tuna samples from sushi venues were actually escolar, a species that can cause illness; red snapper was mislabelled 86% of the time; grouper mislabelling dropped from a high of 40% to 50% during the height of the fake grouper scam in the mid-2000s to 16% in this study; the most egregious fish swap was king mackerel, a high-mercury fish that carries a "Do Not Eat" health warning for sensitive groups, being sold as "grouper."

"The results are disturbing," said Beth Lowell, campaign director at Oceana. "The continued mislabelling of seafood in Florida shows that inspections alone are not enough. Seafood needs to be traced from boat to plate to ensure that it is safe, legal and honestly labelled."