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A seafood fraud report released in May of this year contends that seafood in this country is often mislabeled in restaurants and supermarkets.
Citing DNA tests of 1,000 fish samples from dozens of U.S. cities over the past four years, the report claims that only about 50% of the fish tested were the species listed on the label. Fish labeled as red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod are actually other fish 40% to 70% of the time, the report said. Rockfish and tilapia were often the substitute for snapper, farmed salmon for wild and Pollock for Atlantic cod. A Vietnamese catfish grown in the Mekong Delta called Swai or Basa is often found to be the "fake" species used as a restaurant replacement due to it's very low cost. This product has also caused much controversy due to the unclean farming practices used to produce it.
Unfortunately this rampant consumer fraud could not be attributed to just the distributor or the supermarket or the restaurant serving the product but to all levels of marketing and was driven primarily by costs and profit rather than honest mistake.
The FDA has primary responsibility for ensuring that fish is safe, sanitary, and properly labeled, but the agency has not made seafood labeling a priority, according to a 2009 Government Accountability Office report. Imported seafood accounts for 86 percent of the fish consumed by Americans, but the FDA has the capacity and funding to examine only about 2 percent of imported seafood annually, and its main inspection program focuses on food safety, not potential economic fraud.
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Several states have taken matters into their own hands. Florida officials now inspect restaurant menus and compare them with invoices and boxes of fish in the restaurants. In early 2008 nine area restaurants were cited for serving "fake grouper". Proprietors found with misrepresented fish face fines of up to $800 and can have their restaurant license suspended or revoked.
We at Captain Jerry's are very proud to always be able to say "We know where your fish comes from" and what species it is because our parent company Seafood Dynamics has been buying and selling fresh seafood from all over the world for over 30 years. We import our fish whole and process them here in Southwest Florida, so that we can always be sure of the products we sell.
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