28 ms·

1 in 5 Seafood Samples Is Fake, Report Finds

122 points by smb06 10y ago

dschiptsov 10y ago
According to Murphy's law, every imaginable scam will happen.
notadoc 10y ago
I recall a recent article on much of olive oil being counterfeit. It made me think how easy it would be to dupe other foods, and I suspect a lot of food is fake or falsely labeled. How easy would it be to pass a regular banana off as an organic banana? How easy is it to label one thing as something else? Makes you think a bit.
- noobermin 10y ago
  Here's another perspective on it, how often will you notice? If you don't then does it matter? Before I seem contrarian, I will note that I love sashimi, and of course I can tell the difference between tuna and salmon sashimi. I don't want to think I have a dull tongue, but other times, when I'm just hungry, I don't care. I see the point of worrying about being ripped off when thinking you are buying high end fish, but if I buy cheap fish in a meal from a stall, I don't really expect much in the way of authenticity, so I'm not sure I would care. Perhaps I am just more forgiving.
  - jessewmc 10y ago
    The whole deal with food regulation is it's very hard for a consumer to test for toxic substances/purported nutrition etc. It absolutely matters even if you don't notice.
    - noobermin 10y ago
      This is talking about the identity of fish though, I'd guess that this is not talking about the toxicity of the meat. The article does mention that they are certain species which are known for higher toxic chemical contents, so that can be an issue. However, isn't the toxicity of the meat is a separate issue? I have no idea how the FDA tests for that (sample testing?) but it probably isn't just discrimination on the species of the fish.
      - sintaxi 10y ago
        It matters because its the consumers responsibility to know what they are buying. Obviously for a consumer to do their due diligence a product must be what is claims to be.
      - seandougall 10y ago
        It's highly correlated to species of fish; some species have much, much higher levels of toxins such as mercury, depending on where they live, where they are on the food chain, etc. You can't separate the two.
  - notadoc 10y ago
    Of course it matters, you're being defrauded as a consumer. Aside from that, it could have health ramifications. Most people eat organic to avoid herbicide exposure, and most people use olive oil because it's considered healthy. Obviously there are countless examples. You should get what you pay for.
  - heydenberk 10y ago
    It matters for organic food, because people buy organic food for ethical reasons that don't necessarily have any relationship to quality.
  - larrik 10y ago
    As the article said, the mercury content of different fish can be a very big deal for certain people (especially pregnant women).
    - noobermin 10y ago
      That is a good point, when it is a health issue related to the type of species, I can agree. That seems like a regulatory issue and the FDA or other regulatory agencies should care.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    "Do you care" seems easily demonstrated by what you thought you ordered. If I don't care what kind of fish I am getting, I order fish and chips, or fish tacos. If I care what kind of fish, I order tuna or eel or salmon or trout...
  - DanielStraight 10y ago
    Put simply: It matters because taste is not the only criteria used to select which seafood to buy. One might make a choice based on mercury content, environmental friendliness, dietary restrictions (medical or philosophical), to support (or abstain from supporting) a particular industry, or something else entirely. To allow fraud which can't be detected on the palate is to deny buyers their freedom to choose based on any criteria other than taste. It is not up to the producer what criteria buyers use when choosing their purchases. Also, if the consumer shouldn't care, the producer shouldn't either. If the producer thinks it shouldn't matter what it says on the label, well then... no harm in putting the right thing on the label, right? No? I guess it matters then.
  - xenihn 10y ago
    Escolar substitution is a definite cause for concern, due to its laxative effect.
    - dandandans 10y ago
      Escolar contains a natural wax ester that can cause digestive distress and diarrhea for days. It's been banned in Japan for 40 years. The USDA banned it in the 90s and then unbanned it in 1998.
  - StillBored 10y ago
    Here's another perspective on it, how often will you notice? If you don't then does it matter? A few years ago I purchased some olive oil while overseas from an outfit that was literally running a large machine pressing olives in front of me. Shocking, the oil actually smelled like olives vs the stuff in the bottle, which usually smells like nothing. That oil also had a sharp olive taste which is actually missing from the store purchased stuff as well. There is a bit of an olive oil industry starting in texas as well, and that stuff when purchased directly from a farm (orchard?) tastes like olives as well. Makes me wonder if 100% of the olive oil i've been purchasing in the last decade is fake, or per some of the articles strongly cut. BTW: Its not a function of the age either AFAIK, I purchased nearly a gallon when overseas and it lasted me over a year, all the while maintaining the distinctive smell and taste.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      "Olive oil" by nature (without even getting into fakes) has a fairly wide expected gamut -- extra virgin, virgin, refined, and pomace oils (all of which but the last can be marketed as unqualified "olive oil", though in practice that generally mean either refined or a blend of mostly refined and some virgin.) A place that is doing something like artisanal premium extra virgin olive oil (which is what it sounds like you were getting) should have exactly the relation to generic "olive oil" that you describe, even if nothing involved is fake or adulterated in any way. Which is not to say a lot of what you are buying as generic "olive oil" might not be fake (there's plenty of independent reason to suspect that), but what you describing doesn't really indicate that.
vonmoltke 10y ago
My understanding is that these types of dupes have been going on for decades. I didn't know about the deceptions in white fish, but my mom has frequently told me that my grandpa (a Swedish commercial fisherman who emigrated to New Jersey) often identified shark being sold as swordfish or other muscular, and more expensive, fish.
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  If you look at the provided Seafood Fraud map, most of the SF Bay Area 'mislabeling' incidents come from one report dated 2008 [1]. So yes, it's at least 8 years old at this time. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320708001328 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320708...
  - orky56 10y ago
    Very small sample sized and dated. However, we shouldn't extrapolate either way whether things have improved, stayed the same, or deteriorated.
dandandans 10y ago
I don't think it's a coincidence that these fake food articles—truffle oil, olive oil, seafood—are springing up after Larry Olmsted recently published Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do about It. Olmsted exposes rampant fraudulent labeling and deceptive practices in the food industry, including Parmesan cheese, olive oil, truffle oil, seafood (salmon, snapper, white tuna, shrimp), Kobe beef, and more. I'm about halfway through the book, and it's shocking. It's definitely changed how I shop for certain food and what I order in restaurants.
- dandandans 10y ago
  Here are a few notes: * 91% of seafood consumed in the United States is imported, and half of it is farmed. Yet only one-thousandth of 1 percent of imports are inspected for fraud. * A study of NYC seafood done by Oceana, a non-profit marine conservation group, found fraud in 58% of retail outlets and 39% of restaurants. * Every sushi restaurant from which samples were collected—100%—served fake fish * A supermarket test 2011 found that the five top-selling imported "extra virgin" olive oil brands in the United States failed to meet the basic legal standard 73% of the time. * In 2001, the USDA banned the importation of Kobe eef due to cases of mad cow disease. The ban was lifted in 2012, but only a handful of restaurants/suppliers are able to obtain real Kobe Beef. Yet, we've all seen Kobe beef plastered everywhere on menus; it's all fake. * Kobe is a completely unregulated term. Under USDA regulations, the legal requirement for calling something Kobe beef is that it qualifies as beef.
  - wfunction 10y ago
    > Every sushi restaurant from which samples were collected—100%—served fake fish I'm confused, what were they serving instead? Bison? Crab? Chicken? Tofu? Sharks? How can you fake fish? If I'm being honest, this sounds like an exaggeration to me. Maybe rephrase if that's not what you meant? (Edit: See my comment below [1] referring to Wikipedia -- it appears it's not even clear these are being mislabeled in the first place. Some people just don't think there is a huge distinction between the species; others do. That's another reason why this seems like a gross exaggeration of what is going on.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466029
Animats 10y ago
Trout is usually commercial farm-raised trout. Salmon is usually farm-raised salmon. Beyond that, one wonders.
DominikPeters 10y ago
"The biggest impostor, fittingly, was farmed Asian catfish, a fish with white flesh that is easily disguised when it’s filleted and drenched in sauce. It was sold in place of 18 types of more expensive fish, including perch, cod and grouper." This is especially concerning for people who try to avoid farmed fish (to minimize inflicting suffering). Farmed catfish has an incredibly high suffering/kg ratio, 6x that of salmon, 30x that of chicken meat, and 1000x that of beef. http://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/ http://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-c...
- watty 10y ago
  High suffering/kg ratio, really?
  - loco5niner 10y ago
    That's actually in interesting (and possibly helpuful) ratio... I've often thought I'd rather only have to kill one animal (cow) for ~200 meals than 100 animals (chickens) for the same number of meals...
    - mortenjorck 10y ago
      An interesting metric for sure, but probably one that oversimplifies the nuances of animal welfare ethics. I'd personally rather 100 chickens experience mild discomfort than one cow meet with prolonged suffering. (Not that this specifically should happen with modern slaughter methods, but as a thought experiment.)
      - loco5niner 10y ago
        > probably one that oversimplifies the nuances of animal welfare ethics. certainly.
    - nbb 10y ago
      That's why I only eat blue whale meat.
glup 10y ago
There's industry-level misrepresentation at play here, not just nefarious one-offs by the local fishmonger. On the Pacific coast of the US many retailers (whole foods, etc.) sell fish from the genus Sebastes ("rockfish") as "pacific snapper," though it isn't in Lutjanidae (snappers). From what I've gathered, this practice is old enough that many of the fishermen don't know it isn't what people on the East Coast would consider a snapper. Having grown up on the Gulf, I was amazed how cheap snapper was the first time I bought it, then promptly disappointed by how bad it was by comparison.
vermooten 10y ago
Time to give up fish.
- PieterH 10y ago
  Fish is shit, was a slogan my friend Jan Husar and me came up with. Fake fish is a real health threat. Farmed fish from SE Asia often contains liver fluke eggs. If you eat these raw you can get cancer of the bike duct. See http://m.cancer.org/cancer/bileductcancer/detailedguide/bile-duct-cancer-risk-factors http://m.cancer.org/cancer/bileductcancer/detailedguide/bile.... That isn't scare mongering. I got this cancer five years ago and now am dying from it. The only cause I could see that made sense was sushi made from raw farmed fish.
banach 10y ago
Solution: eat cheap vegan food. The risk of a fake apple or carrot scandal is exactly zero.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Actually, fake apples -- i.e. apples that are not the variety claimed, or grown in the place or the way advertised -- are a real possibility in some places. Depends on economic incentives. http://www.freshplaza.com/article/120094/China-30-40-procent-of-imported-fruits-in-the-market-are-actually-fake http://www.freshplaza.com/article/120094/China-30-40-procent... Yes, there's even fake tofu.
  - banach 10y ago
    Did not know that! I guess growing at home is the only way to be really sure what we're eating.
aryehof 10y ago
Given the exponential growth in world human population, who knows how for how much longer we will be eating any real fish.
- overcast 10y ago
  There is tons of abundant delicious fish out there to eat. The problem is that people want to eat the popular ones. Plenty of cultures just eat whatever they catch, and we should too.
jamespitts 10y ago
There are technologies being developed with which consumers confirm, with a high level of reliability, the source of food items and other goods: https://www.provenance.org https://www.provenance.org
MrJagil 10y ago
As I said in the last fake food thread, this seems to be a problem tech can help solve. If big-brands fake their olive oil, it _should_ be easy to look up. Luckily computers are really good at indexing. A site where brands are rated (rotten tomatoes), and where you can look up groceries (actually, there are already some barcode scanning apps right?) for a 'true' ingredients list. Sites like these hopefully ride the wave of public frustration and when the fake-food debacle quiets down, it becomes a more regular sort of rating site (i've often wondered which olive oil tastes best, but hard to compare 12 brands when it takes a month to finish 1 bottle)
jbpetersen 10y ago
This is exactly the sort of generally mundane tracking problem that could be solved beautifully using a blockchain for following the supply chain.
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122 points by smb06 10y ago

According to Murphy's law, every imaginable scam will happen.

I recall a recent article on much of olive oil being counterfeit. It made me think how easy it would be to dupe other foods, and I suspect a lot of food is fake or falsely labeled. How easy would it be to pass a regular banana off as an organic banana? How easy is it to label one thing as something else? Makes you think a bit.

noobermin 10y ago
Here's another perspective on it, how often will you notice? If you don't then does it matter? Before I seem contrarian, I will note that I love sashimi, and of course I can tell the difference between tuna and salmon sashimi. I don't want to think I have a dull tongue, but other times, when I'm just hungry, I don't care. I see the point of worrying about being ripped off when thinking you are buying high end fish, but if I buy cheap fish in a meal from a stall, I don't really expect much in the way of authenticity, so I'm not sure I would care. Perhaps I am just more forgiving.
- jessewmc 10y ago
  The whole deal with food regulation is it's very hard for a consumer to test for toxic substances/purported nutrition etc. It absolutely matters even if you don't notice.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    This is talking about the identity of fish though, I'd guess that this is not talking about the toxicity of the meat. The article does mention that they are certain species which are known for higher toxic chemical contents, so that can be an issue. However, isn't the toxicity of the meat is a separate issue? I have no idea how the FDA tests for that (sample testing?) but it probably isn't just discrimination on the species of the fish.
    - sintaxi 10y ago
      It matters because its the consumers responsibility to know what they are buying. Obviously for a consumer to do their due diligence a product must be what is claims to be.
    - seandougall 10y ago
      It's highly correlated to species of fish; some species have much, much higher levels of toxins such as mercury, depending on where they live, where they are on the food chain, etc. You can't separate the two.
- notadoc 10y ago
  Of course it matters, you're being defrauded as a consumer. Aside from that, it could have health ramifications. Most people eat organic to avoid herbicide exposure, and most people use olive oil because it's considered healthy. Obviously there are countless examples. You should get what you pay for.
- heydenberk 10y ago
  It matters for organic food, because people buy organic food for ethical reasons that don't necessarily have any relationship to quality.
- larrik 10y ago
  As the article said, the mercury content of different fish can be a very big deal for certain people (especially pregnant women).
  - noobermin 10y ago
    That is a good point, when it is a health issue related to the type of species, I can agree. That seems like a regulatory issue and the FDA or other regulatory agencies should care.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  "Do you care" seems easily demonstrated by what you thought you ordered. If I don't care what kind of fish I am getting, I order fish and chips, or fish tacos. If I care what kind of fish, I order tuna or eel or salmon or trout...
- DanielStraight 10y ago
  Put simply: It matters because taste is not the only criteria used to select which seafood to buy. One might make a choice based on mercury content, environmental friendliness, dietary restrictions (medical or philosophical), to support (or abstain from supporting) a particular industry, or something else entirely. To allow fraud which can't be detected on the palate is to deny buyers their freedom to choose based on any criteria other than taste. It is not up to the producer what criteria buyers use when choosing their purchases. Also, if the consumer shouldn't care, the producer shouldn't either. If the producer thinks it shouldn't matter what it says on the label, well then... no harm in putting the right thing on the label, right? No? I guess it matters then.
- xenihn 10y ago
  Escolar substitution is a definite cause for concern, due to its laxative effect.
  - dandandans 10y ago
    Escolar contains a natural wax ester that can cause digestive distress and diarrhea for days. It's been banned in Japan for 40 years. The USDA banned it in the 90s and then unbanned it in 1998.
- StillBored 10y ago
  Here's another perspective on it, how often will you notice? If you don't then does it matter? A few years ago I purchased some olive oil while overseas from an outfit that was literally running a large machine pressing olives in front of me. Shocking, the oil actually smelled like olives vs the stuff in the bottle, which usually smells like nothing. That oil also had a sharp olive taste which is actually missing from the store purchased stuff as well. There is a bit of an olive oil industry starting in texas as well, and that stuff when purchased directly from a farm (orchard?) tastes like olives as well. Makes me wonder if 100% of the olive oil i've been purchasing in the last decade is fake, or per some of the articles strongly cut. BTW: Its not a function of the age either AFAIK, I purchased nearly a gallon when overseas and it lasted me over a year, all the while maintaining the distinctive smell and taste.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    "Olive oil" by nature (without even getting into fakes) has a fairly wide expected gamut -- extra virgin, virgin, refined, and pomace oils (all of which but the last can be marketed as unqualified "olive oil", though in practice that generally mean either refined or a blend of mostly refined and some virgin.) A place that is doing something like artisanal premium extra virgin olive oil (which is what it sounds like you were getting) should have exactly the relation to generic "olive oil" that you describe, even if nothing involved is fake or adulterated in any way. Which is not to say a lot of what you are buying as generic "olive oil" might not be fake (there's plenty of independent reason to suspect that), but what you describing doesn't really indicate that.

vonmoltke 10y ago

My understanding is that these types of dupes have been going on for decades. I didn't know about the deceptions in white fish, but my mom has frequently told me that my grandpa (a Swedish commercial fisherman who emigrated to New Jersey) often identified shark being sold as swordfish or other muscular, and more expensive, fish.

jedmeyers 10y ago
If you look at the provided Seafood Fraud map, most of the SF Bay Area 'mislabeling' incidents come from one report dated 2008 [1]. So yes, it's at least 8 years old at this time. [1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320708001328 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320708...
- orky56 10y ago
  Very small sample sized and dated. However, we shouldn't extrapolate either way whether things have improved, stayed the same, or deteriorated.

dandandans 10y ago

I don't think it's a coincidence that these fake food articles—truffle oil, olive oil, seafood—are springing up after Larry Olmsted recently published Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do about It. Olmsted exposes rampant fraudulent labeling and deceptive practices in the food industry, including Parmesan cheese, olive oil, truffle oil, seafood (salmon, snapper, white tuna, shrimp), Kobe beef, and more. I'm about halfway through the book, and it's shocking. It's definitely changed how I shop for certain food and what I order in restaurants.

dandandans 10y ago
Here are a few notes: * 91% of seafood consumed in the United States is imported, and half of it is farmed. Yet only one-thousandth of 1 percent of imports are inspected for fraud. * A study of NYC seafood done by Oceana, a non-profit marine conservation group, found fraud in 58% of retail outlets and 39% of restaurants. * Every sushi restaurant from which samples were collected—100%—served fake fish * A supermarket test 2011 found that the five top-selling imported "extra virgin" olive oil brands in the United States failed to meet the basic legal standard 73% of the time. * In 2001, the USDA banned the importation of Kobe eef due to cases of mad cow disease. The ban was lifted in 2012, but only a handful of restaurants/suppliers are able to obtain real Kobe Beef. Yet, we've all seen Kobe beef plastered everywhere on menus; it's all fake. * Kobe is a completely unregulated term. Under USDA regulations, the legal requirement for calling something Kobe beef is that it qualifies as beef.
- wfunction 10y ago
  > Every sushi restaurant from which samples were collected—100%—served fake fish I'm confused, what were they serving instead? Bison? Crab? Chicken? Tofu? Sharks? How can you fake fish? If I'm being honest, this sounds like an exaggeration to me. Maybe rephrase if that's not what you meant? (Edit: See my comment below [1] referring to Wikipedia -- it appears it's not even clear these are being mislabeled in the first place. Some people just don't think there is a huge distinction between the species; others do. That's another reason why this seems like a gross exaggeration of what is going on.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12466029

Animats 10y ago

Trout is usually commercial farm-raised trout. Salmon is usually farm-raised salmon. Beyond that, one wonders.

DominikPeters 10y ago

"The biggest impostor, fittingly, was farmed Asian catfish, a fish with white flesh that is easily disguised when it’s filleted and drenched in sauce. It was sold in place of 18 types of more expensive fish, including perch, cod and grouper." This is especially concerning for people who try to avoid farmed fish (to minimize inflicting suffering). Farmed catfish has an incredibly high suffering/kg ratio, 6x that of salmon, 30x that of chicken meat, and 1000x that of beef. http://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-caused-by-various-animal-foods/ http://reducing-suffering.org/how-much-direct-suffering-is-c...

watty 10y ago
High suffering/kg ratio, really?
- loco5niner 10y ago
  That's actually in interesting (and possibly helpuful) ratio... I've often thought I'd rather only have to kill one animal (cow) for ~200 meals than 100 animals (chickens) for the same number of meals...
  - mortenjorck 10y ago
    An interesting metric for sure, but probably one that oversimplifies the nuances of animal welfare ethics. I'd personally rather 100 chickens experience mild discomfort than one cow meet with prolonged suffering. (Not that this specifically should happen with modern slaughter methods, but as a thought experiment.)
    - loco5niner 10y ago
      > probably one that oversimplifies the nuances of animal welfare ethics. certainly.
  - nbb 10y ago
    That's why I only eat blue whale meat.

glup 10y ago

There's industry-level misrepresentation at play here, not just nefarious one-offs by the local fishmonger. On the Pacific coast of the US many retailers (whole foods, etc.) sell fish from the genus Sebastes ("rockfish") as "pacific snapper," though it isn't in Lutjanidae (snappers). From what I've gathered, this practice is old enough that many of the fishermen don't know it isn't what people on the East Coast would consider a snapper. Having grown up on the Gulf, I was amazed how cheap snapper was the first time I bought it, then promptly disappointed by how bad it was by comparison.

vermooten 10y ago

Time to give up fish.

PieterH 10y ago
Fish is shit, was a slogan my friend Jan Husar and me came up with. Fake fish is a real health threat. Farmed fish from SE Asia often contains liver fluke eggs. If you eat these raw you can get cancer of the bike duct. See http://m.cancer.org/cancer/bileductcancer/detailedguide/bile-duct-cancer-risk-factors http://m.cancer.org/cancer/bileductcancer/detailedguide/bile.... That isn't scare mongering. I got this cancer five years ago and now am dying from it. The only cause I could see that made sense was sushi made from raw farmed fish.

banach 10y ago

Solution: eat cheap vegan food. The risk of a fake apple or carrot scandal is exactly zero.

ptaipale 10y ago
Actually, fake apples -- i.e. apples that are not the variety claimed, or grown in the place or the way advertised -- are a real possibility in some places. Depends on economic incentives. http://www.freshplaza.com/article/120094/China-30-40-procent-of-imported-fruits-in-the-market-are-actually-fake http://www.freshplaza.com/article/120094/China-30-40-procent... Yes, there's even fake tofu.
- banach 10y ago
  Did not know that! I guess growing at home is the only way to be really sure what we're eating.

aryehof 10y ago

Given the exponential growth in world human population, who knows how for how much longer we will be eating any real fish.

overcast 10y ago
There is tons of abundant delicious fish out there to eat. The problem is that people want to eat the popular ones. Plenty of cultures just eat whatever they catch, and we should too.

jamespitts 10y ago

There are technologies being developed with which consumers confirm, with a high level of reliability, the source of food items and other goods: https://www.provenance.org https://www.provenance.org

MrJagil 10y ago

As I said in the last fake food thread, this seems to be a problem tech can help solve. If big-brands fake their olive oil, it _should_ be easy to look up. Luckily computers are really good at indexing. A site where brands are rated (rotten tomatoes), and where you can look up groceries (actually, there are already some barcode scanning apps right?) for a 'true' ingredients list. Sites like these hopefully ride the wave of public frustration and when the fake-food debacle quiets down, it becomes a more regular sort of rating site (i've often wondered which olive oil tastes best, but hard to compare 12 brands when it takes a month to finish 1 bottle)

jbpetersen 10y ago

This is exactly the sort of generally mundane tracking problem that could be solved beautifully using a blockchain for following the supply chain.

mabevi 10y ago

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