Widespread fraud was uncovered some time ago in the fish industry, and now it has been verified beyond doubt by Oceana,a non-profit established solely to advocate for the oceans using fact-based campaigns. And what facts are better than DNA tests?
From 2010 through 2012 Oceana collected over 1200 fish samples from retail outlets in eleven states and Washington, D.C. The samples were purchased from grocery stores [741 samples], restaurants [243 samples] and sushi bars [241 samples.]
[A link to the Oceana report is here.]
[A link to an earlier report from 2010 in PLOS One is here.]
There were 46 types of fish samples, including grouper, salmon, snapper, tuna, yellowtail, cod, sole and halibut. The results may cause you some distress, in fact, if you've eaten "tuna" lately and experienced intestinal problems, you may already have experienced the distress.
By outlet, sushi bars mislabeled their fish 74% of the time. [These are referred to as "venues" in the study so I suppose there must be sushi outlets other than sushi bars.] Restaurants mislabeled their food 38% of the time, and grocery stores mislabeled fish 18% of the time.
Snapper was the most commonly mislabeled fish, with every single sample collected in California [70 samples] being mislabeled.
59% of all tuna was mislabeled, and 71% of sushi "tuna" was something else, and 84% of "white tuna" was actually escolar.
Swapping escolar for white tuna is not only illegal, but it can also cause serious health problems. Escolar, or oilfish (Lepidocybium flavobrunneum), is not actually a tuna species at all, but is instead a snake mackerel that contains a naturally occurring toxin, gempylotoxin. This toxin can cause mild to severe gastrointestinal problems even for some who eat only a few ounces of the fish. Because of the health problems associated with escolar, Italy and Japan have banned it, several other countries have issued health advisories for it and the FDA advises against the sale of it in the U.S.
The reason why so many sushi venues label escolar as white tuna in the U.S., particularly since it is banned in Japan, remains a mystery, as does when the practice actually started. Researchers documented five such cases of escolar being sold as white tuna in New York and Denver in 2008,while white tuna fraud turned up in Florida state government testing as early as 2006.
More recent investigations have also found high levels of white tuna fraud in New York City.
See the Report, page 16.
Salmon is the second most-consumed fish in the US, and so it was almost 1/3 of the samples in the Oceana study. "The highest levels of salmon fraud were found in New York City (20 percent), followed by South Florida (19 percent) and then Southern California (14 percent). While there were only four mislabeled salmon samples out of the 22 purchased in sushi venues nationwide, three out of those four were sold in Portland."
The widespread fraud in the fish industry is not without consequences, both to consumers and the oceans.
The health impacts of seafood fraud were displayed front and center in New York. Blueline tilefish was sold as both Alaskan halibut and red snapper in one grocery store. Tilefish is on the FDA’s Do Not Eat list for sensitive populations, including pregnant women and children, because of its high mercury content. While all species substitutions are misleading and unacceptable, this type of egregious fraud is especially alarming, since it potentially puts consumers’ health at risk.
The conclusion of the Oceana report was sobering.
These fraudulent practices also carry potentially serious concerns for the health of consumers, and for the health of our oceans and vulnerable fish populations.
These findings describe what are literally thousands and thousands of independent frauds conducted on a daily basis, over the whole of the country and probably the world. They are possible to some extent because most consumers know little or nothing about fish or what it is supposed to taste like, much fish looks alike on a store shelf, and there are hundreds of kinds of fish to choose from.
Contrast this with other sources of proteins, like eggs, and you can see where problems might arise. There are precious few ways to substitute an egg. The same is true of a sirloin steak, something about which many Americans are very familiar.
The solution seems to be straightforward. This is something for which a government regulatory scheme is ideal. This is because the ways by which fish enters the stream of commerce are myriad, the types of fish are numerous, and the outlets are all over the country, even in every neighborhood. Independent or individual efforts are not going to begin to solve this problem.
What's needed are serious laws, serious prosecutors, and some serious jail-time for the perpetrators. And this will only come about if we start harassing our representatives to do something. It might help to point out that the members of Congress are just as victimized as the rest of us, a situation not always the case. As the report noted,
Seafood was collected and sampled for mislabeling for more than two years in the nation’s capital, even while Congress considered legislation to prevent seafood fraud. Even at the seat of the federal government, consumers are being misled more than 25 percent of the time when they purchase seafood.