Fish often mislabeled, report finds
There’s something ambiguous about seafood, an all-embracing ocean advancement accumulation contends in “Bait and Switch,” a afresh appear address on seafood fraud. According to Oceana, in Washington, D.C., seafood is generally mislabeled in restaurants and at stores. Packaging and processing may aswell belittle the bulk of breading and ice in arctic angle products.
Citing DNA tests of 1,000 angle filet samples from dozens of U.S. cities over the accomplished four years, the address said that alone 50 percent of the angle activated were the breed listed on the label. Angle labeled as red snapper, agrarian apricot and Atlantic cod are in fact added angle 25 percent to 70 percent of the time, the address said, with rockfish and tilapia generally commissioned for snapper, farmed apricot for agrarian and pollock for Atlantic cod.
“Species barter is a way actionable angle can be apple-pie into the seafood market,” said Michael Hirshfield, Oceana’s arch scientist. “Species barter not alone undermines acknowledged fishermen and acknowledged fishing by acceptance actionable fishing to flourish, but it aswell undermines consumer-driven efforts to do the appropriate affair and ask for breed that are responsibly managed.”
Eighty-four percent of seafood eaten in the U.S. is imported, but alone 2 percent is inspected, the address said. Hirshfield said the best way to ensure angle is acknowledged and accurately labeled would be with a civic tracking database application bar codes, agnate to the way Amazon advance its
packages.
“There should be no botheration in tracking angle aback to a accurate barge that bent the angle at a accurate time in a accurate abode in a accurate way,” Hirshfield said.
A agent for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the bureau is borderline how generally angle barter occurs. “When we acquisition it, we act on it,” said the FDA’s Douglas Karas, citation cases in 2010 and 2009 in which companies had been bent mislabeling branch as red snapper and arctic bedrock sole as grouper fish.
“Our affairs are to conduct an all-embracing collaborative balloon of the (DNA bar-coding) adjustment in hopes of accepting all-embracing accreditation,” Karas said. The FDA urges consumers to beware of almighty low prices for fish.