Oceana finds widespread mislabeling of seafood

When is a red snapper really a red snapper? According to the latest DNA tests of seafood sold in U.S. restaurants and supermarkets, not very often.
Following U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines, the environmental activist organization Oceana found 33% of the 1,215 samples of seafood it tested between 2010 and 2012 were mislabeled. The group tested fish purchased at 674 retail outlets in 21 states.

Product mislabeling has dominated the headlines the last few weeks as stories of horsemeat-for-beef substitution rock European food processors and retailers, but substitution fraud has long been a problem for the worldwide seafood industry.

Companies that find themselves victims of food fraud can suffer serious hits to their reputations and sales, and those found to be engaging in mislabeling could face serious repercussions for their misdeeds.

In the Oceana report, only seven of 120 samples of “red snapper” turned out to be red snapper–an 87% rate of fraud. Fifty-nine percent of the tuna tested was mislabeled, with 84% of white tuna samples turning out to be escolar, which can cause illness to some people. In all, mislabeling was found in 59% of the seafood types tested, or in 27 of 46 types.

Mislabeled fish was found in 44% of retail outlets where it was purchased. Oceana said it found mislabeled fish in 74% of the sushi outlets in which it made purchases. Thirty-eight percent of restaurants that were tested nationwide had mislabeled fish, and 18% of grocery stores.

Oceana was unable to determine where in the supply chain the mislabeling was occurring. “With lagging federal oversight and minimal government inspection despite rising fish imports, and without sampling along the supply chain, it is difficult to determine if fraud is occurring at the boat, during processing, at the wholesale level, at the retail counter or somewhere else along the way,” it said.

Oceana is advocating a nationwide traceability system that tracks fish from the time it is caught until the time it is sold to the consumer, saying this will keep out illegally caught fish and better protect public health. A group of 500 chefs last year also called for a federal traceability law. A bill was introduced in the last Congress to require seafood traceability, and Oceana’s Beth Lowell said a new bill should be introduced in the coming weeks.

“We definitely think enforcement needs to increase,” said Lowell, adding the FDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have “dismally low” levels of inspections. “There is not a lot of enforcement of existing laws…given the high levels of mislabeling, it’s clear the way we handle seafood needs to change.”

Lisa Weddig of seafood trade association National Fisheries Institute said the key to stamping out fraud is better enforcement of existing laws. Authorities can use fish sales tickets to trace back at each step of the process to see where mislabeling is occurring, said Weddig, who heads NFI’s Better Seafood Board, which was created to help fight fraud such as mislabeling and short-weighting.

“If the invoice came in as snapper and it says red snapper on the menu, then you know where the problem is,” Weddig said, adding it’s not the job of seafood distributors to verify if restaurants and supermarkets are properly labeling product. “It’s the responsibility of the distributor to make sure the package they sell is labeled correctly.”

Companies provide traceability systems to track fish throughout the supply chain, and U.S. supermarkets are required by law to list the country of origin for seafood. Beef sold in the U.S. was also subject to country-of-origin requirements, but objections from beef producers in Canada and Mexico have kept it from being enforced. The World Trade Organization is considering their objections.

It’s highly unlikely horsemeat will find its way into the U.S. beef supply, said Jim Hodges, executive vice president of the American Meat Institute, a national trade association that represents companies that process 95% of red meat and 70% of turkey in the U.S.

U.S. processors haven’t slaughtered horses since the mid-2000s, and all of that horsemeat was sold in Europe. The U.S. doesn’t import beef from Europe because of concerns over mad-cow disease, and the U.S. has strict labeling laws and inspectors in every beef and poultry processing facility in the country, Hodges said.

“This is a European story,” Hodges said. “The probability that we would have the same kind of issue here is extremely remote.”