Saving Seafood

Nutrition

Latest Oceana seafood fraud report takes aim at SIMP, but misses mark

March 20, 2019 — The intention of Oceana’s most recent report was to call for an expansion of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). SIMP is an electronic traceability program designed to reduce fraud in the import of seafood into the United States. The program was created under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 and is managed by U.S. Customs and NOAA. Currently, SIMP requires importers to maintain records for shrimp, abalone, Atlantic cod, blue crab, dolphinfish, grouper, king crab, Pacific cod, red snapper, sea cucumber, sharks, swordfish, and tunas, detailing how they were caught or harvested and tracking the products until they reach the U.S. The program however does not extend past the importation stage – once it is in the domestic supply chain, the traceability systems end. Oceana is using their latest report as advocacy for including all seafood species (not just the ones listed above) and to extend traceability further into the supply chain past the point of importation.

Oceana sought to expose the limitations of this program by, “launching a nationwide investigation of some popular seafood types not covered by the program.” “Oceana employees and volunteers collected more than 400 samples from over 250 locations in 24 states and the District of Columbia, including restaurants, large grocery stores and smaller markets.”

Same critique of Oceana’s approach to seafood fraud

There were 29 different seafood “types” collected, but no criteria for how they chose these “types” other than they were not found in the SIMP program. Oceana used DNA testing to match the results with the label as per FDA guidelines. If something was labeled as simply “seabass”, but was more specifically Patagonian tooth, that label was considered incorrect and fraudulent. The same can be said for a label that read “snapper” but was not specific to explain which exact species. This is a critical decision by Oceana because it raises the incidence of seafood mislabeling found in restaurants where menu descriptions are often more general than in retail settings. Indeed, samples obtained in this study from restaurants were mislabeled 26% of the time compared to retail 16% of the time. As for seabass and snapper, they saw rates of mislabeling at 55% and 42%, respectively.

Oceana also attempted to exaggerate its results around catfish. Swai (Pangasius bocourti), a species of catfish, and channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) are two major seafood imports to the US, typically from East Asia. Some of these imported catfish species have been associated with low sustainability ratings and health concerns; there is no doubt that this is a tricky labeling situation for the FDA to monitor. But there is already a strict labeling law that requires all imported catfish species – even true channel catfish – to be labeled differently. “Catfish” can now only be on labels of US caught or farm raised catfish products, even if it is the exact same species, as is the case with channel catfish imports. This law was enacted as an economic buffer a few years ago to protect the US catfish aquaculture industry. To this end, Oceana found only 7% of catfish labels to be incorrect. To me, that is a pretty low rate for one of the most consumed seafoods in the country, but Oceana framed this result much differently.

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

 

A labor of love: How Martha Stewart and True North created their new seafood product line

March 19, 2019 — It was like the first day of school when Martha Stewart’s culinary director, Thomas Joseph, arrived at the 2019 Seafood Expo North America event in Boston, Massachusetts on its opening day.

Joseph, who is a 2017 James Beard Award winner, pulled up to the continent’s largest seafood trade event with the four initial offerings under the Martha Stewart brand’s latest seafood product line in tow, ready for their debut. The products were created in partnership with Cooke Inc.’s True North Seafood.

“We’re super-excited,” Joseph told SeafoodSource on Sunday, 17 March, as SENA19 roared to life. “Today was like the first day of school coming here, like I’m dropping my kids off.”

If you ask Joseph and Cooke Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson, the kids will be more than all right. Each a “labor of love,” the product line’s first outing includes Atlantic Salmon with Lemon Herb Butter; Sockeye Salmon with Miso Butter; Wild Alaska Pollock with Southwest Spice Blend; and a Seafood Medley (Wild Alaska Pollock, Atlantic Salmon, and Bay Scallops) with Herb Spice Blend. The line is expected to hit grocery store shelves in the United States in May 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Seafood Fraud: Is your hake fake? Not if it’s ecolabeled!

March 19, 2019 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

DNA barcoding of more than 1400 Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) labelled products has shown that less than 1% were mislabeled, compared with a reported average global seafood mislabeling rate of 30 percent. These results published in the journal Current Biology suggests that the MSC’s ecolabeling and Chain of Custody program is an effective deterrent for systematic and deliberate species substitution and fraud.

The MSC is a global non-profit that sets a benchmark for sustainable fishing and traceable supply chains. If fisheries and supply chain companies get certified, they can use the MSC’s blue fish label on products in stores, on fresh fish counters and on restaurant menus.

Species identification

“There is widespread concern over the vulnerability of seafood supply chains to deliberate species mislabeling and fraud. In the past, this has included some of the most loved species such as cod being substituted by farmed catfish, which can seriously undermine consumer trust and efforts to maintain sustainable fisheries,” said Jaco Barendse, Marine Stewardship Council and lead author on the paper

DNA methods have been widely used to detect species mislabelling and a recent meta-analysis of 4500 seafood product tests from 51 peer-reviewed publications found an average of 30 percent were not the species stated on the label or menu In the present study, the largest and most comprehensive assessment of MSC-labeled products, the MSC worked with laboratories of the TRACE Wildlife Forensics Network and SASA’s (Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture) Wildlife DNA Forensic unit to employ DNA barcoding to identify the species in 1402 MSC certified fish products from 18 countries.

They found that 1389 were labeled correctly and thirteen were not. This represents a total rate of less than 1% (0.92) species mislabeling in contrast to the global average of 30%. Mislabeled products were found in fresh and frozen pre-packed products and in restaurants, mainly in western Europe, with one case in the USA. All cases of mislabeling were identified in whitefish (cods, hakes, hoki) and flatfish products.

Mislabeling or fraud?

There are many reasons that mislabeling may occur. Unintentional mislabeling can result from misidentification of species when the fish is caught, mix-ups during processing, or ambiguities in product naming, such as the use of catchall trade names such as ‘snapper’ or ‘skate’.

Fraud, on the other hand, occurs when there is intentional substitution mainly for financial gain. This is typically when a higher value species is substituted with one of lower value. Fraud may also arise when species from unsustainable or illegal fisheries gain access to the market by passing them off as legally caught fish.

While DNA testing can identify cases of species substitution, on its own it cannot confirm whether this was fraud. To do this it is necessary to trace the product’s movement back through the supply chain to identify the exact step where the issue occurred.

The MSC’s Chain of Custody certification requires that every distributor, processor, and retailer trading certified seafood has a documented traceback system that maintains separation between certified and non-certified seafood, and correctly identifies MSC products at every step.

For the thirteen mislabeled products, records were obtained from each company at each step in the supply chain. Trace-backs revealed that only two mislabeled samples could be confirmed as intentional substitutions with species of non-certified origin. MSC certified products can command higher prices and better market access than non-certified products therefore these substitutions were likely to be fraudulent. Those responsible for the substitutions had their MSC certificates suspended. There were other instances where substitutions inadvertently occurred at the point of capture or during onboard processing – likely due to misidentification between closely related, similar-looking species that co-occur in the catch. There was no discernible financial motive.

“The use of DNA tools to detect substitution in the fish supply chain is well-documented but until now has essentially revealed a depressing story. Our research flips this on its head and demonstrates how we can apply similar technology to validate the success of eco-labels in traceable, sustainable fishing,” said Rob Ogden, TRACE Wildlife Forensics Network and University of Edinburgh.

Next steps

MSC certificates apply only to fish stocks and fisheries, and not entire species. Although MSC Chain of Custody Certification requires separation of MSC and non-MSC certified products, there remains a risk for possible deliberate substitution between certified sustainable and other fish of the same species.

Francis Neat, Head of Strategic Research at the MSC said “While we can get a good indication of whether species-level substitution is taking place, using DNA barcoding and tracebacks, the future for the MSC is to invest in state-of-the-art next generation gene sequencing and isotopic and trace element profiling. This will make it possible to determine which stock a fish product came from, in addition to whether it is the species mentioned on the packaging.”

New study suggests fish oil derivative may benefit heart health

March 19, 2019 — New numbers suggest that a purified fish oil derivative, a prescription drug called Vascepa, is more effective at preventing cardiovascular events than previously thought.

The drug lowered the rate of these events in high-risk patients — including strokes, heart attacks and deaths from cardiovascular causes — by 30% overall versus placebo, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

This is better than previously thought because because the study authors took into account not just first cardiovascular events as before, but also second, third, fourth events, and so on. Earlier results were announced by Irish drugmaker Amarin Pharma in September and then in a study released November in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“By looking only at first events, we underestimate the true underlying treatment benefit offered,” study author Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt said in a statement Monday.

“With this drug, we are not only preventing that first heart attack but potentially the second stroke and maybe that third fatal event,” said Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

According to these latest data on cardiovascular episodes, Vascepa slashed first events by a quarter, second and third events by more than 30%, and later events by almost a half. The researchers estimated that by treating a thousand patients for five years, they could prevent 76 coronary revascularizations, 42 heart attacks, 14 strokes, 16 hospitalizations due to unstable angina and 12 deaths related to cardiovascular causes.

Read the full story at CNN

Seafood Fraud Investigation: 20% of Fish Mislabeled Nationwide

March 12, 2019 — Seafood fraud is prevalent in the United States, according to a new investigation that finds 20 percent of the fish we buy may be mislabeled.

A nationwide investigation by ocean conservation group Oceana tested more than 400 seafood samples from 250 locations, including restaurants, small markets, and big chain grocery stores. Oceana found one in five of the fish were mislabeled, and an even larger one in three businesses sold mislabeled seafood.

Oceana tested popular seafood between March and August 2018. It found that the most frequent mislabeling turned up at restaurants and small markets (26 percent and 24 percent, respectively), while only 12 percent was mislabeled at larger grocery store chains. The investigation uncovered imported seafood being sold as regional favorites, leading customers to believe the seafood was local. It also found vulnerable species mislabeled as more abundant species. And some fish was also given generic labels like “sea bass” and “catfish” which Oceana says disguises lower-value species or masks health and conservation risks.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Your sea bass might be tilapia, report warns

March 8, 2019 — The incidence of seafood fraud still remains high despite more consumer awareness about the issue.

A report released Thursday morning from a nonprofit group finds that roughly 20 percent of seafood products it tested were mislabeled, deceiving customers about everything from where the fish was caught to the type of fish they are eating.

Oceana, an international organization focused on ocean restoration, started investigating the issue in 2010, testing almost 2,000 samples from 30 states for DNA identification and finding that around one-third of the samples tested were mislabeled.

“It never ceases to astonish me that we continue to uncover troubling levels of deception in the seafood we feed our families,” said Kimberly Warner, one of report’s authors.

The discovery comes at a time when seafood consumption among Americans is at a high and the U.S. is importing approximately 90 percent of the seafood it consumes.

Read the full story at Politico

What is seafood fraud? Dangerous and running rampant, report finds

March 7, 2019 — If you order a filet of snapper at a restaurant, you probably expect to be served snapper. But a new report suggests there’s a strong chance you’ll be getting something else.

Oceana, a marine conservation nonprofit with a recent history of studying seafood mislabeling, today published a new report on the state of seafood fraud in the U.S.

They found that 20 percent of the 449 fish they tested were incorrectly labeled. Orders of sea bass were often replaced by giant perch, Alaskan halibut by Greenland turbot, and Florida snapper by lavender jobfish, to name a few.

Oceana made headlines in 2016 by publishing a report finding massive seafood fraud on a global scale. Since then, NOAA created the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), to track 13 species deemed at high risk of being fraudulently sold or sourced illegally.

None of the 13 SIMP monitored species were sampled.

“We wanted to highlight that there are other species other than the high-risk species,” says Kimberly Warner, a senior scientist at Oceana and one of the report’s authors.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Amazon’s grocery stores may push seafood changes

March 4, 2019 — Amazon’s new venture into opening full-scale grocery stores will force a change in the way fresh seafood and other items are sold, analysts say.

On 1 March, The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon is planning to open dozens of grocery stores in several major United States cities, including Los Angeles, California.

The stores would not be the smaller, 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go concept stores that Amazon began testing last year, but rather, they will be 35,000-square-feet mainstream grocery stores. The larger size will allow Amazon to offer more variety of products – and likely lower-priced items – than Whole Foods Market stores, the Journal reported.

Existing grocery chains should be concerned by Amazon’s entrance into the market, analysts said in the article. Stock prices for Walmart, Kroger, Target, BJs, Costco, and others all sank on Friday, 1 March.

“Amazon has become one of the world’s largest retailers by driving cost out of the marketplace. Food retailers the ilk of HEB, Publix, Kroger, and Albertsons will have the most to lose as they continue to fight for dollars from the ‘middle,’” Steven Johnson, grocerant guru at consulting firm Foodservice Solutions, told SeafoodSource.

Meanwhile, value grocery chains such as Lidl, Aldi, and WinCo will likely have more growth as Amazon enters the market, according Johnson.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The Most Expensive Seafood in the World Lands in New York

February 29, 2019 — New York has drastically increased its number of unagi-ya, or Japanese-style freshwater eel restaurants, of late—from zero to two.

Hachibei in Midtown East and Unagi in SoHo both specialize in traditional preparations of the slippery ray-finned fish. In Japan, eel is as prized as Kobe beef (and more endangered), but in New York—which is more accustomed to consuming the far less expensive anago (sea eel) in sushi—it’s relatively unknown, at least for now.

Japan is devouring the delicacy at an alarming rate. Nearly 75 percent of the world’s unagi is consumed in the country; 99 percent of that is industrially farmed from baby glass eels (anguilla Japonica). Conservationists warn that the species is overfished and could face a fate similar to that of bluefin tuna.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Cooke, Martha Stewart partner on value-added seafood range

February 26, 2019 — Diversified seafood group Cooke is partnering with US retail and lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart on a new range of value-added seafood products using raw material from its global farmed and wild supply companies.

Cooke, under its True North Seafood sales arm, is teaming up on the range with Sequential Brands Group, which licenses a range of consumer brands, including Martha Stewart’s, the seafood company told Undercurrent News. The range will launch next month and will be on show at the upcoming Boston seafood show, held in the East Coast US city from March 17-19.

The product line offers a range of True North products accompanied by a Martha Stewart signature butter flavor or spice blend. Packaging will also include an easy to follow recipe created by Stewart’s “test kitchen” team, the company said. These include Atlantic salmon with lemon herb butter; sockeye salmon with miso butter; pollock with a southwest spice blend, and a seafood medley – using pollock, salmon, and bay scallops — with a herb spice blend.

“Knowing where my seafood comes from is very important to me, and I’ve enjoyed and served True North Seafood to family and friends for years,” said Stewart, in a statement.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News