Canada has a problem with seafood labels
Buying fish in Vancouver is like fishing in troubled waters. 25% of the seafood samples tested in metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, by a team of scientists from the local University were mislabeled.
Nearly 300 samples of fish bought from grocery stores, sushi bars, and non-sushi restaurants were analyzed using DNA barcoding. "The most important finding is that the fish fraud/mislabeling rate in metro Vancouver is still relatively high compared to 10 years ago", said Xiaonan Lu, author of the study and associate professor of food science at the University of British Columbia.
The findings led to a rate of 25% mislabeled products sold in stores and restaurants, reports Seafood Source. Still, this is considered a low rate compared with one resulted from an Oceana study conducted in Canada and United States: 50%.
Nevertheless, in the study conducted by University of British Columbia (UBC), snapper was the most commonly mislabeled fish (95 %), followed by cod (45%), halibut (33%), salmon (8.8%), and tuna (7%).
Researchers claim that they found evidence of both intentional and unintentional mislabelling. For example, many fish sold as snapper or red snapper were actually far less valued species such as tilapia. Sutchi catfish took the place halibut, snapper, sole and cod. The entire seafood/fish supply chain is very complicated. We only have the access to the final products sold at the restaurant, sushi venue, etc. Therefore, at this stage, it is impossible to find out where the seafood fraud happens"", explained Lu.
On the other hand, Robert Hanner, chief technology officer at TRU-ID, mentioned that this is a fact that has been transformed almost in a common practice in the domestic market and allows fishermen to sell the seafood harvested illegally. "Canada is one of the top seafood-producing countries in the world and our industry complies with much more stringent labelling when exporting products to the European Union, but Canadian consumers don’t benefit from this same level of transparency at home", considers Hanner, according to a press release from UBC.
The team didn't release the names of the stores or restaurants were the mislabeling evidence were found.
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