April 17, 2012 – Some fishes are not what companies are labeling them as. According to a study released today by the Washington DC-based nonprofit organization Oceana, grocery stores, restaurants and sushi venues consistently called various whitefish, “anything from farmed tilapia to pollock,” red snappers, when they were not red snappers.
“Red snapper is more well known than other snappers and most other fish. It’s also severely overfished so is less readily available than in the past,” explains Margot Stiles, a senior scientist and campaign manager at Oceana in Washington DC. “From a retail perspective, people want red snapper and retailers try to give it to them, even if it gets swapped for another fish.”
Oceana collected 119 samples from locations in Orange County and Los Angeles between May and December 2011. Eighteen types of fishes were tested against California and federal laws using DNA analysis, of which only six were labeled correctly. Red snapper was mislabeled in each of the 34 cases, while wild salmon, Dover soles, yellowtail and white tuna also had high rates of misrepresentation.
Read the complete story from Forbes.