“It’s clear that seafood fraud respects no borders”, said Oceana senior campaign director Beth Lowell. Besides cheating consumers into paying for something they’re not actually getting, there’s also health concerns: The report says 58 percent of the “substitute species” discovered carried health risks to consumers – ranging from parasites to environmental chemicals to natural toxins found in species like pufferfish – that can prove risky when not properly labelled.
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Oceana credits the E.U.’s increasingly tough legislation on illegal fishing and supply chain transparency with the drop in mislabeling. The report states that if the United States adopts comprehensive, full-chain traceability, it will be more hard for consumers to be misled.
Oceana analyzed more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as news reports, government documents, and non-profits reports. This includes: importing, exporting, distributing, packaging, retail and wholesale.
The menace of seafood fraud ― the secret substitution of cheaper seafood for a more expensive, desirable option ― is not new.
In the USA, a Presidential Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Seafood Fraud was established in 2014 to address the issue.
“Across the world, our review reveals that seafood mislabeling appears to be motivated primarily by economic gain through intentionally misleading buyers at every level of the seafood supply chain”, the report reads. American consumers deserve to know more about their seafood, including what kind of fish it is, how and where it was caught or farmed, and they should be able to trust the information is accurate. In contrast, US seafood fraud averaged 28% in studies released since 2014. More than half of the samples were a species that could make people sick. Oceana found that the most common substitutes across multiple studies were Asian catfish, hake and escolar.
Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican, and Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote President Barack Obama in January 2014 asking that federal agencies do a better job of coordinating their efforts to fight seafood fraud. In all, it found 19% of the 25,700 global samples gleaned from the literature had been mislabeled. But the group has called on the federal government to be able trace and verify the retail path of all seafood sold in the US – from its point of harvest all the way to the dinner plate.
The report’s authors point out that in addition to the possible health risks, seafood mislabeling cheats consumers and honest fishermen financially. Those risks included parasites, environmental chemicals, aquaculture drugs, and natural toxins.
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One species that is commonly used in place of “white tuna” is escolar. This species has naturally occurring gempylotoxin and has been associated with severe food poisoning outbreaks. Numerous white fishes sold in the United States as snapper and grouper were actually Asian catfish. Pufferfish contains tetrodotoxin, which is lethal in high doses, a Chicago woman who consumed it was sent to the hospital and required weeks of care.
