Bait and Switch for NYC Fish

Some teenagers came up with a cool idea for a science project- they performed DNA testing on dozens of samples of fish sold in city restaurants and stores and found that a quarter of the fish sold for high prices were actually cheap species of fish.

This is Mozambique Talapia, not White Tuna.

This is a Skipjack “white” Tuna, about the length of your forearm.

From Reuters here:

Up to a quarter of fish in stores and restaurants in New York City was mislabelled as a more expensive variety, according to samples collected by two U.S. teenagers and tested with modern genetic identification methods.

In the worst cases, two samples of filleted fish sold as red snapper, caught mostly off the southeast United States and in the Caribbean, were instead the endangered Acadian redfish from the North Atlantic.

The DNA of fish from a sushi restaurant called “white tuna” turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a cheaper variety often raised on fish farms. One restaurant offered “Mediterranean red mullet” but the DNA matched spotted goatfish from the Caribbean.

The two classmates from New York’s Trinity school collected and sent off 60 fish samples to the University of Guelph in Canada. Of 56 samples that could be identified, 14 were mislabelled. In all cases, the fish was labelled as a more costly type, apparently ruling out simple chance.

The project did not give the names of the restaurants and shops since it was unclear if they were knowingly to blame or had been deceived by suppliers.

The project should have listed the names of the restaurants. It could have been done without accusations of fraud, however, its pretty tough to mixup tuna with tilapia. This would make a great news exposé if someone would take it on. The problem has been going on for a while. In fact, the FDA has published factsheets for buyers and suppliers on what the fish looks like to prevent fraud like this.