February 26, 2013 — Oceana, an advocacy organization devoted to "protecting the world's oceans," and the latest to test fish samples, would have us believe the mislabeling problem is dire, dire, dire. But dig into the report, and it's hard to find evidence for most of those claims.
By now, we all know that the fish we buy has about a one in three chance of being something other than what's on the label.
Just how much should we care?
We can all agree that, in a perfect world, fish would be labeled accurately, but Oceana, an advocacy organization devoted to "protecting the world's oceans," and the latest to test fish samples, would have us believe the mislabeling problem is dire, dire, dire:
"As our results demonstrate, a high level of mislabeling nationwide indicates that seafood fraud harms not only the consumer's pocket book, but also every honest vendor or fisherman along the supply chain. These fraudulent practices also carry potentially serious concerns for the health of consumers, and for the health of our oceans and vulnerable fish populations."
But dig into the report, and it's hard to find evidence for most of those claims.
Oceana collected fish samples from around the country, identified 1215 of them with DNA testing, and found that 401 didn't match the FDA's "Guide to Acceptable Market Names for Seafood Sold in Interstate Commerce." "Oceana Study Reveals Seafood Fraud Nationwide," reads the headline, and the report goes on to use the word "fraud" another 99 times. Read beyond that headline, though, and the picture changes.
The first problem with the report is the standard it uses to determine mislabeling. The FDA's list isn't law, it's a set of "non-binding regulations" that lists the "acceptable market name" of each fish species. The problem is that many fish have many names – what's a pogy to someone like me, who learned to fish on Cape Cod, is a bunker to someone like my husband, who learned to fish on Long Island, but a menhaden to someone at the FDA, whose fishing education is not clear. The list acknowledges some "vernacular" names, but specifies that they "are included ONLY for reference." The emphasis is theirs.
It's an emphasis Oceana takes to heart. "Labeling seafood with something other than the acceptable market name is mislabeling," they say, because "The FDA's general policy on vernacular names is that they are unacceptable market names for seafood." So, even though striped bass is almost always called "rockfish" on large swaths of the East coast, Oceana counts it as mislabeled.
The FDA's list applies only to fish sold interstate and, even then, it is a guideline and not a law. Yet Oceana counts every instance of a label not on the list as fraud.
Read the full opinion piece at The Huffington Post