The Shocking Truth About Seafood Fraud

Earlier this year Oceana made a splash with its National Seafood Fraud Report, a landmark investigation which found that a third of the seafood it tested nationwide had been mislabeled.

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A new investigation by Al-Jazeera is confirming the worst about the residual impacts of the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. According to the network, scientists and fisherman are stunned by their recurring findings: “horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp” along with…

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Which fish is which?!

INVESTIGATION FINDS RAMPANT MISLABELING OF SEAFOOD   

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For the first time ever, the nation’s largest group of food retail companies has spoken out on behalf of protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay fishery—the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery. The Food Marketing Institute (c), which represents 26,000 retail food stores, and $680 billion in annual revenue—three-quarters of U.S. retail food store sales—announced its support for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study currently underway to determine the suitability of large-scale development in Bristol Bay, including the Pebble Mine.

“Since Bristol Bay is one of the world’s largest sustainable salmon fisheries, it plays an important role in the supply chains of a number of our wholesale and retail members,” said Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel for the Food Marketing Institute in a letter to the EPA.

“We look forward to reading the preliminary report expected to be released in the next few months and hope it will reflect our own belief in the importance of continuing to preserve and responsibly manage this extraordinary natural resource,” the letter further stated.

The watershed assessment, expected in April 2012, was initiated by the EPA in response to requests from the Bristol Bay commercial fishing industry and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, who oppose the Pebble Project due to the risks to the fishery. They petitioned the EPA to use its authority under Section 404c of the Clean Water Act to restrict the disposal of mine waste into Bristol Bay’s pristine waters, if science shows that it will harm the salmon fishery. The EPA study is expected to provide the scientific basis on which the agency can take further protective action under 404c.

The Bristol Bay salmon fishery is the economic engine for the region, generating $318 to $573 million in annual revenue, and roughly 10,000 jobs.

(Photo by Todd Raden)

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Centuries of overexploitation of fish and other marine resources—as well as invasion of fish from the Red Sea—have turned some formerly healthy ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea into barren places, an unprecedented study of the Mediterranean concludes.

Research by an international team of scientists designed to measure the impact of marine reserves found that the healthiest places were in well-enforced marine reserves; fish biomass there had recovered from overfishing to levels five to 10 times greater than that of fished areas. However, marine “protected” areas where some types of fishing are allowed did not do better than sites that were completely unprotected. This suggests that full recovery of Mediterranean marine life requires fully protected reserves, the scientists write in a paper published Feb. 29, 2012, in the journal PLoS ONE.

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As the House Appropriations Committee deliberated on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) FY 2013 federal budget on Feb. 29, Oceana is calling on Congress to increase FDA resources to fight seafood fraud and protect American consumers from seafood mislabeling. In a new report titled, Fishy Business: Do You Know What You Are Really Eating?, Oceana explains how seafood mislabeling and species substitution can have dangerous consequences for public health and ocean ecosystems.

“As seafood fraud becomes more widespread, consumers are going to know less and less about what they’re really eating,” said Oceana campaign director Beth Lowell. “The FDA has a responsibility to ensure that the seafood sold in the United States is safe and properly labeled, and Congress must give them the necessary resources to do this.”

Seafood is one of the most popular foods in the U.S. While the U.S. imports more than 84 percent of its seafood, only two percent is currently inspected by the FDA. Recent studies have shown seafood may be mislabeled as often as 25 to 70 percent of the time for popular fish species like red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod, disguising species that are less desirable, cheaper or more readily available. Not only does mislabeling seafood trick consumers, but it can also allow illegally caught fish to be laundered into the U.S. market. Species substitution and illegal fishing are estimated to cost the U.S. billions of dollars every year and can have a real and harmful impact on ocean ecosystems.

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