Smoke, mirrors, and mislabeled cod: poor transparency in the European seafood industry

Abstract

Accurate seafood labels can play a role in encouraging sustainable fisheries operation, by helping consumers to correctly identify the origins of seafood products, and thereby allowing them to make informed, responsible purchasing decisions. Yet, the renaming and mislabeling of seafood – as a consequence of ineffective regulations or poor policy implementation – remain serious problems. Here, we show that 39 out of 156 (25%) cod and haddock products, randomly sampled from supermarkets, fishmongers' shops, and take‐away restaurants throughout Dublin, Ireland, were genetically identified as entirely different species from that indicated on the product labels, and therefore were considered mislabeled under European Union (EU) regulations. More significantly, 28 out of 34 (82.4%) smoked fish samples were found to be mislabeled. These results indicate that the strict EU policies currently in place to regulate seafood labeling have not been adequately implemented and enforced. Although the problem of seafood mislabeling has recently been brought to public attention in North America, we show here that product mislabeling is also an issue in Europe. We suggest that – through sustained consumer misinformation – mislabeling may hamper efforts to allow depleted cod stocks to recover.

Fish mislabelling in France: substitution rates and retail types

“…Despite these limitations, cod is the species represented over most studies by the largest number of samples and is the most adapted for comparisons. Our cod sampling is similar in size to the sampling of several cod-centered publications (Di Pinto et al 2013, Miller and Mariani 2010, Miller et al 2012. In comparison, our substitution rate is one order of magnitude lower than in Italy (Di Pinto et al 2013), or Ireland Mariani 2010, Miller et al 2012, table 3), but close to UK (7.4% in Miller et al 2012).…”

The seafood supply chain from a fraudulent perspective

“…Thus only 1% of imported seafood in the US is reportedly inspected for mislabelling, despite the fact that 90% of the imported fish originates from countries with inferior regulations, such as Thailand, Indonesia, China and Vietnam (Lou 2015). It is therefore unsurprising that seafood substitution is reported to be widespread within the global marketplace (Roos et al 2007;Triantafyllidis et al 2010;Mohanty et al 2013;Stamatis et al 2015; at rates ranging from 25-50% in broad retail market surveys (Jacquet and Pauly 2008;Wong and Hanner 2008;Buck 2010;Heyden et al 2010;Hanner et al 2011;Hellberg and Morrissey 2011;Cawthorn et al 2012;Warner et al 2013) and 25-60% in commonly substituted species such as red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod (Marko et al 2004;Consumer Reports 2006;Miller and Mariani 2010). Oceana released the most comprehensive review of publications on seafood mislabelling.…”

“…This has been attributed to the increasing demand and recognition of seafood as a healthy alternative to red meat, the similarity and diversity of seafood species available, the stock limitations and price pressures in the food market (Martinez and Friis 2004;Jacquet and Pauly 2008;Mazzeo et al 2008;Barbuto et al 2010;Miller and Mariani 2010;Heyden et al 2010;Mohanty et al 2013;Leal et al 2015;Mueller et al 2015;Stamatis et al 2015;Jennings et al 2016). As consumer demand rises towards the estimated seven-fold increase in seafood production required to meet the predicted global population growth of over 9.8 billion by 2050 (Delgado et al 2003;United Nations 2015;Jennings et al 2016), the number of cases of food adulteration and intervention of opportunistic elements in the seafood industry increases (Mohanty et al 2013).…”

A Review of the Tools Used for Marine Monitoring in the UK: Combining Historic and Contemporary Methods with Modeling and Socioeconomics to Fulfill Legislative Needs and Scientific Ambitions

“…However, it is perhaps more appropriate here to focus on the end aims of downstream analyses and what can now be achieved with new technology. The most common application for using molecular tools is species identification, whereby a cryptic individual, pathogen, or a partly processed fish sample (Miller and Mariani, 2010) can be identified by a specific DNA-based assay. Species ID techniques can also be used in a quantitative manner; in marine systems example uses include quantification of fecal contamination at swimming beaches (Griffith and Weisberg, 2011) or for direct quantification of zooplankton that are otherwise difficult to identify (Vadopalas et al, 2006).…”