Widespread Seafood Fraud Found in New York City

Typography
Seafood fraud can happen anywhere – even in the Big Apple. Fraud includes any false information accompanying seafood, from short weighting to swapping out one species of fish for another. Oceana’s investigation focused on species substitution, or the swapping of a lower value or lower quality fish for a more desirable species. This bait and switch hurts our oceans, our health and rips off consumers. And most importantly, it is illegal.

Seafood fraud can happen anywhere – even in the Big Apple. Fraud includes any false information accompanying seafood, from short weighting to swapping out one species of fish for another. Oceana’s investigation focused on species substitution, or the swapping of a lower value or lower quality fish for a more desirable species. This bait and switch hurts our oceans, our health and rips off consumers. And most importantly, it is illegal.

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Everywhere seafood is tested, fraud has been found. In fact, Oceana and others recently found shocking levels of mislabeling in the Boston (48 percent), Los Angeles (55 percent) and Miami (31 percent) areas. In 2012, Oceana also investigated seafood mislabeling in the New York City area as part of its Campaign to Stop Seafood Fraud. Despite frequent reporting on the issue for more than 20 years, Oceana found that 39 percent of the 142 seafood samples collected and DNA tested from grocery stores, restaurants and sushi venues were mislabeled, according to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines.

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Market image via Wikipedia.