SEAFOOD FRAUD: A Third Of The Fish You Buy Isn't What They Say It Is
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Oceana, an international organization focused on ocean conservation, recently conducted a study of commercially available seafood, testing pieces of fish to see if they were actually the fish they were being sold as.
It tested DNA from fish samples purchased at restaurants, markets, and grocery stories, and found that one-third (33 percent) of the 1,215 samples analyzed nationwide were mislabeled, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines.
By those FDA guidelines, some highly related fish species can be sold under the same "market name."
This seafood fraud leads consumers to pay a lot more for a lesser quality product, or may lead to health hazards as people who may be allergic to some types of seafood may end up consuming it because of mislabeling.
We talked to Dr. Kimberly Warner, a senior scientist at Oceana, over Skype to get more details on the study and its implications: