The Food and Drug Administration thinks Americans could be falling for some pretty big fish stories, so it's getting to the bottom of the deception at the DNA level.
Seafood fraud is rampant in the U.S., with advocacy group Oceana estimating that in some states more than half of the fish sold in retail outlets are mislabeled. The most common fraud tends to involve more desirable and expensive fish like wild salmon, Atlantic cod and red snapper.
To counter false labeling, the FDA project will create DNA bar codes for each species of fish. The information will be maintained in a public database that inspectors can use to identify unknown species. FDA biologists are traveling to fishing tournaments, seafood conventions and markets in the U.S. and the Philippines to collect hundreds of fish for testing.
The Smithsonian Institution's Division of Fisheries and Laboratories of Analytical Biology will help identify and store the piscine samples long term.
The labeling effort could help prevent some seriously fishy dealings like the 2007 rash of illnesses that resulted when toxic puffer fish were smuggled into the U.S. and passed off as “headless monkfish.”
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