Abstract
Seafood mislabeling is a widely documented problem that has significant implications for human and environmental health. Defined as when seafood is sold under something other than its true species name, seafood fraud allows less-desired or illegally-caught species to be marketed as one recognizable to consumers. Red snapper is one of the most frequently mislabeled species, with previous studies showing mislabeling rates as high as 77%. We assessed whether red snapper mislabeling rates varied among states or vendor type. We also determined the stock status of substituted species to assess whether frequently substituted stocks were more or less at-risk than red snapper stocks. We used standard DNA barcoding protocols to determine the identity of products labeled as “red snapper” from sushi restaurants, seafood markets, and grocery stores in the Southeastern United States. Overall, 72.6% of samples (out of 62) were mislabeled, with sushi restaurants mislabeling samples 100% of the time. Out of 13 substituted species (including samples that were indistinguishable between two species), seven (53.8%) were not native to the U.S. Of the ten substituted species assessed by the IUCN red list, nine (90%) were listed as less threatened than red snapper. These results contribute to a growing body of mislabeling research that can be used by government agencies trying to develop effective policy to combat seafood fraud and consumers attempting to avoid mislabeled products.
Highlights
Seafood mislabeling in the United States has been recognized for decades: a 1997 press release by the United States National Seafood Inspection Laboratory stated 37% of fish tested between 1988 and 1997 were mislabeled (Ropicki et al, 2010)
Seafood labeled as red snapper was collected from March–May 2018 from sushi restaurants, fish markets, and grocery stores along the coastline of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida (Figure 1)
Of samples collected in markets and grocery stores, filets had a marginally higher mislabeling rate than whole fish
Summary
Seafood mislabeling in the United States has been recognized for decades: a 1997 press release by the United States National Seafood Inspection Laboratory stated 37% of fish tested between 1988 and 1997 were mislabeled (Ropicki et al, 2010). Whether intentional or unintentional, weakens public trust, compromises consumers’ ability to adhere to dietary restrictions, and poses public health concerns (Ling et al, 2008; Miller and Mariani, 2014) Mislabeling makes it impossible for consumers, especially children and pregnant women, to monitor their intake of high-trophic level species that could contain elevated levels of mercury (Marko et al, 2014). A fish that seems to be readily available but is mislabeled leads the public to believe the fish stock is plentiful, regardless of the true state of the stock (Marko et al, 2004) This is critical for popular seafood like red snapper, where the South Atlantic stock is considered overfished and is undergoing overfishing (SEDAR, 2016). We measured red snapper mislabeling throughout the Southeastern coast of the United States to test the hypotheses that there are differences in mislabeling rates among states and vendor types, and that substituted species typically have healthier stocks than red snapper
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