Nutrition

January 2, 2013 — A genetically engineered salmon — dubbed “Frankenfish” by critics — could be facing an upstream swim despite preliminary FDA approval, with another federal agency’s official and advocates questioning whether the fast-growing farm fish might pose a threat to wild salmon.

Maynard-based Aqua­Bounty Technologies — with a genetically modified fish that grows twice as fast as native Atlantic salmon — won a key victory in its quest to put the fish on American dinner plates late last month when a Food and Drug Administration report found the highly controlled process of raising largely sterile fish would have “no significant impact” on the environment.

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is raising concerns about the experimental product.

“Although AquaBounty claims their fish are sterile, that sterilization process is not 100 percent. There is the possibility that some of these fish could escape and reproductively interact with wild native salmon,” James Geiger, an assistant regional director for fisheries in the wildlife service’s Northeast region, told the Herald. “Any potential offspring could reduce the biological and ecological fitness of the native wild salmon.”

 

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

 

 

December 17, 2012 — When non-profit ocean conservation group Oceana released a report last week detailing the fraudulent sale of mislabeled fish in New York City as a widespread practice, it got lots of press and shocked consumers. But no one should have been surprised.

This kind of fraudulent food labeling is shockingly pervasive in this country, and this particular topic of bait and switch fish sales in New York stores and restaurants, confirmed by genetic testing, was demonstrated by an acquaintance of mine back in 2008.

Oceana’s findings are not exactly subtle, since their report is titled “Widespread Seafood Fraud Found in New York City,” and is available as a pdf download. As many outlets, including the New York Times, recently reported, Oceana used genetic testing to prove that among other dubious swaps,  tilapia and tilefish are often passed off as the more expensive red snapper. Other cited examples were tilapia posing as catfish, escolar sold as white tuna, while an Asian fish called pangasius (or ponga) is routinely passed off as everything from catfish to sole to flounder to grouper. FDA rules even allow fast food chains (and others) to sell langostino as lobster, despite the simple and rather obvious fact that it is not (it’s actually a member of the crab family), and that real lobster is both expensive and highly coveted. The Oceana study purchased 13 varieties of seafood, of which only four did not turn out to be fakes some of the time. It noted that every single one of the 16 sushi restaurants tested – 100% – failed in accuracy, and overall so did 39% – well more than third – of restaurants and retail fish sellers. That is widespread.

Despite the ominous title and results of the study, New Yorkers actually fared relatively well. Oceana cited much higher fake fish stats for Boston (48%) and sushi-mad LA, where over half the samples (a whopping 55%) were not what they purported to be. Miami did the “best” of the  cities cited with “only” 31% of its fish fraudulent. I’m sure Southern Floridians will sleep well knowing that 69% of the time they eat out, a grade we call a D in school, they can expect to get what they ordered paid for. The Times article also noted similar results in investigations in Florida by the St. Petersburg Times and Massachusetts by the Boston Globe, which Times food reporter Kim Severson summed up by saying that “Massachusetts consumers routinely paid for more expensive fish and got cheaper substitutes.”

Read the full story at Forbes

 

 

December 12, 2012 — Those people who have seafood allergies in the New York City area could be facing an increased risk, according to a study by conservation organization Oceana.

The report says that about 40 percent of the fish sold in New York is misidentified, and replaced with a cheaper variety of seafood in many cases.

The New York Times reported that DNA analysis of about 150 samples of fresh seafood from 81 locations in New York found that 39 percent were labeled incorrectly.

The report showed that 13 types of fish, including tilefish, which contains a high level of mercury, were misidentified as red snapper. The Food and Drug Administration advises pregnant women and young children not to eat tilefish.

And white tuna was often substituted with snake mackerel, or escolar, 94 percent of the time. Escolar has a toxin that may cause severe diarrhea after eating a few ounces.

 

Read the full story here

 

 

December 11, 2012 — If you buy fish in New York City, particularly from a small market or restaurant, there's a pretty good chance it won't be the fish it claims to be.

An ocean conservation group announced today that three in five retail outlets it visited, including 100 percent of sushi restaurants, were selling mislabeled fish. The report is just the latest in a string of investigations revealing that seafood mislabeling is commonplace.

The researchers, from the group Oceana, collected 142 fish samples earlier this year from 81 retail outlets, including large grocery stores, corner bodegas, high-end restaurants, and sushi bars. They analyzed the samples using DNA barcoding, and found that 39 percent of the fish were labeled as other species.

Farm-raised Atlantic salmon had been substituted for wild-caught salmon, they found. Ocean perch, tilapia, and goldbanded jobfish were sold as red snapper. Fish labeled "white tuna" was escolar, which can cause acute gastrointestinal problems. And one serving of halibut was really tilefish, a species with so much mercury that the Food and Drug Administration has placed it on the do-not-eat list for pregnant women and young children.

The study didn't address who exactly is responsible for the mislabeling — whether at the supplier or the retail level. "That's for the enforcers," notes Kimberly Warner, a senior scientist at Oceana.

Last year the Boston Globe reported that 48 percent of fish in Massachusetts were mislabeled, similar to findings in Los Angeles (55 percent) and Miami (31 percent). A follow-up from the Globe published earlier this month found that 76 percent of fish in a new survey were mislabeled.

And in 2008, two New York City high school students conducted their own DNA study of four restaurants and 10 grocery stores in Manhattan and found that a quarter of the fish they sampled were mislabeled.

 

Read the full story on NPR News

 

 

 

 

NEW YORK — December 11, 2012 — Fish is frequently misidentified on menus and grocery store counters in New York City, even at expensive restaurants and specialty shops, DNA testing for a new study found. National supermarket chains had the best record for accuracy in seafood labeling, the researchers reported.

The researchers, from the conservation group Oceana, said that genetic analyses showed that 39 percent of nearly 150 samples of fresh seafood collected from 81 establishments in the city this summer were mislabeled. The study did not identify any of the restaurants or stores, although it noted that most were in Manhattan.

In some cases, cheaper types of fish were substituted for expensive species. In others, fish that consumers have been urged to avoid because stocks are depleted, putting the species or a fishery at risk, was identified as a type of fish that is not threatened. Although such mislabeling violates laws protecting consumers, it is hard to detect.

Some of the findings present public health concerns. Thirteen types of fish, including tilapia and tilefish, were falsely identified as red snapper. Tilefish contains such high mercury levels that the federal Food and Drug Administration advises women who are pregnant or nursing and young children not to eat it.

Ninety-four percent of fish sold as white tuna was not tuna at all but in many cases a fish known as snake mackerel, or escolar, which contains a toxin that can cause severe diarrhea if more than a few ounces of meat are ingested.

“There are a lot of flummoxed people out there who are trying to buy fish carefully and trying to shop their conscience, but they can’t if this kind of fraud is happening,” said Kimberly Warner, a senior scientist at Oceana, who led the study.

She said that Oceana’s study might underestimate the prevalence of the problem because researchers primarily solicited samples by asking its New York-area supporters to send in tiny slices of the fish they were eating.

Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association, said that restaurants were victims, too, when it came to fish fraud. “Restaurants would be very concerned that a high percentage of fish are not what they had ordered,” he said. “Unless you’re very sophisticated, you may not be able to tell the difference between certain species of fish when you receive them.”

 

Read the full story in the New York Times 

 

 

NEW YORK — December 10, 2012 — New York City seafood sellers don’t know a tuna from a tilapia. Close to 60% of big retail stores, and 40% of mom-and-pop locations, sold fish that was mislabeled, a new study reveals.

The research, by the environmental group Oceana, also found that 100% of sushi bars they tested have hooked their customers on counterfeit chum.

Researchers tested the DNA of 142 fish bought from 81 retail outlets. A whopping 56 samples — 39% — were mislabeled.

“It’s unacceptable that New York seafood lovers are being duped more than one-third of the time when purchasing certain types of fish,” said Kimberly Warner, an Oceana scientist.

All 16 sushi eateries subjected to testing sold customers mislabeled fish.

Oceana staff bought seafood mostly from retailers in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens that were recommended by online reviews from Yelp.

 

Read the full story on New York Daily News 

 

 

BOSTON, Mass. — December 6, 2012 — Richard Garcia, executive chef of the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel, has developed a unique sustainable seafood program by giving his customers what they didn’t know they wanted.

Eschewing local favorites like cod and haddock, Garcia is introducing his customers to fish such as sea robin, dogfish, butterfish and Acadian redfish.

Garcia — who heads the Boston chapter of the Chefs Collaborative, an association devoted to sustainable sourcing and safeguarding the environment — said his focus is “on the fishermen instead of the fish.”

Sustainable seafood organizations label seafood as green, for the best choice; yellow, for a questionable choice; and red, for seafood whose population is threatened. “If one thing should be on the red list, the fishermen should be,” Garcia said.

Local restrictions on catching popular but overfished species have made it more difficult to make a living if those are the only fish consumers want to eat.

By paying $2 or $3 per pound for so-called “trash fish” that otherwise might be regarded as worthless, Garcia and other chefs help fishermen earn a decent living. “At the same time, we’re letting the cod and haddock stocks hopefully rebuild,” he said.

 

Read the full story at Nation's Restaurant News

 

 

December 5, 2012 — Menhaden fish is a very good source of DPA, one of the essential fatty acids. But is it a good source of the others, DHA and EPA? Dr. Alex Byelashov discusses this and other food sources of DPA.

View the video here

 

 

WASHINGTON — December 4, 2012 — Salmon that’s been genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal could soon show up on your dinner plate. That is, if the company that makes the fish can stay afloat.

The Food and Drug Administration in 2010 concluded that Aquabounty’s salmon was as safe to eat as the traditional variety. The agency also said that there’s little chance that the salmon could escape and breed with wild fish, which could disrupt the fragile relationships between plants and animals in nature. But more than two years later the FDA has not approved the fish, and Aquabounty is running out of money.

‘‘It’s threatening our very survival,’’ says CEO Ron Stotish, chief executive of the Maynard, Mass.-based company. ‘‘We only have enough money to survive until January 2013, so we have to raise more. But the unexplained delay has made raising money very difficult.’’

The FDA says it’s still working on the final piece of its review, a report on the potential environmental impact of the salmon that must be published for comment before an approval can be issued. That means a final decision could be months, even years away. While the delay could mean that the faster-growing salmon will never wind up on American dinner tables, there’s more at stake than seafood.

Aquabounty is the only U.S. company publicly seeking approval for a genetically-modified animal that’s raised to be eaten by humans. And scientists worry that its experience with the FDA’s lengthy review process could discourage other U.S. companies from investing in animal biotechnology, or the science of manipulating animal DNA to produce a desirable trait. That would put the U.S. at a disadvantage at a time when China, India and other foreign governments are pouring millions of dollars each year into the potentially lucrative field that could help reduce food costs and improve food safety.

Already, biotech scientists are changing their plans to avoid getting stuck in FDA-related regulatory limbo. Researchers at the University of California, Davis have transferred an experimental herd of genetically-engineered goats that produce protein-enriched milk to Brazil, due to concerns about delays at the FDA. And after investors raised concerns about the slow pace of the FDA’s Aquabounty review, Canadian researchers in April pulled their FDA application for a biotech pig that would produce environmentally-friendly waste.

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

 

December 1, 2012 — A year after a Globe investigation found restaurants and stores across Massachusetts were routinely selling cheaper, lower-quality fish than they promised customers, a new round of DNA testing shows the vast majority are still mislabeling seafood.

Ken’s Steak House in Framingham again served Pacific cod instead of a more expensive Atlantic species. Slices of fish sold as white tuna at Sea To You Sushi in Brookline were again actually escolar, an oily species nicknamed the “ex-lax’’ fish by some in the industry because it can cause digestion problems. H Mart, an Asian supermarket chain found to have sold mislabeled red snapper last year, this time was selling inexpensive freshwater Nile perch as pricier ocean grouper at its Burlington store.

The results underscore an ongoing lack of regulation in the nation’s seafood trade — oversight so weak restaurants and suppliers know they will not face punishment for mislabeling fish. Over the past several months, the Globe collected 76 seafood samples from 58 of the restaurants and markets that sold mislabeled fish last year. DNA testing on those samples found 76 percent of them weren’t what was advertised.

Some restaurant operators who repeatedly mislabeled fish blamed suppliers. Others said naming inconsistencies were the result of clerical errors. Several made only partial revisions to their menus. Some, like at Hearth ’n Kettle in Attleboro, corrected their menus, but waitstaff still wrongly described the fish as local. And a few said the issue was not a priority.

“We’re too busy to deal with such silliness,” Janet Cooper, of Ken’s Steak House, said after several phone interviews during which she could not explain why the restaurant was still selling far less expensive Pacific cod as locally caught fish.

After the Globe’s “Fishy Business” series last fall, state and federal lawmakers pledged quick action to strengthen oversight of the seafood industry. US Representative Ed Markey, Democrat of Malden, filed a bill in July to require traceability of fish from the boat to the dinner plate, but the legislation hasn’t moved out of House subcommittees.

Elsewhere, little progress has been made to protect consumers from paying too much for inferior fish. The Food and Drug Administration, which maintains a list of acceptable market names for fish species, has historically focused efforts on food safety, rather than economic fraud such as seafood substitution. The agency recently began conducting its own DNA testing, but the results so far have provided little insight into where mislabeling occurs in the supply chain.

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe