Americans frequent victims of seafood fraud

WASHINGTON: Fish sold in the United States is often deliberately mislabelled, making American consumers the unwitting victims of “widespread seafood fraud,” according to a report out Thursday.

Fully one-third of 1,215 fish samples collected by researchers proved to be a different variety than what was written on the label, according to Oceana, an advocacy group working to protect the world’s oceans.

The report was released as Europe is roiling from its own food packaging scandal, after millions of prepared food items labelled as containing beef were found to have been made with horsemeat.

Oceana said tuna and red mullet were among the most frequently misidentified fish varieties in the United States and that of 120 samples labelled as red snapper, just seven were found to be genuine.

“Purchasing seafood has become the ultimate guessing game for US consumers,” said Beth Lowell, campaign director at Oceana.

“Whether you live in Florida or Kansas, no one is safe from seafood fraud,” she said.

“We need to track our seafood from boat to plate so that consumers can be more confident that the fish they purchase is safe, legal and honestly labelled.”

Oceana said cheaper farmed fish frequently are substituted for wild seafood – pangasius for grouper, for example, and tilapia sold as red snapper.

Farmed salmon is often passed off as wild or king salmon, the group said, and overfi shed species sometimes are substituted for more sustainable varieties.

Previous studies by Oceana have found widespread mislabelling of red snapper, cod, tuna and wild salmon.

The group said seafood was fraudulently identified as often as not in southern California, which had a mislabelling rate of 52 per cent.

Fish was mislabelled 49 per cent of the time in the Texan cities of Austin and Houston, and 48 per cent of the time in Boston, Massachusetts.

Thirty-nine per cent of fish was mislabelled in New York City; 38 per cent in northern California and South Florida; 36 per cent in Denver, Colorado; 35 per cent in Kansas City, Missouri; and 32 per cent in Chicago, the study said. — AFP