On the menu, but not on your plate

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/10/23/on_the_menu_but_not_on_your_plate/?page=full

By Jenn Abelson and Beth Daley
Globe Staff / October 23, 2011

The sliver of raw fish sold as white tuna at Skipjack’s in Foxborough was actually escolar, an oily, cheaper species banned in Japan because it can make people sick. The Alaskan butterfish at celebrity chef Ming Tsai’s Blue Ginger in Wellesley was really sablefish, traditionally a staple at Jewish delicatessens, not upscale dining establishments.

At Chau Chow Seafood Restaurant in Dorchester, the $23 flounder fillet turned out to be a Vietnamese catfish known as swai - nutritionally inferior and often priced under $4 a pound.

Those were among the findings of a five-month Globe investigation into the mislabeling of fish. It showed that Massachusetts consumers routinely and unwittingly overpay for less desirable, sometimes undesirable, species - or buy seafood that is simply not what it is advertised to be. In many cases, the fish was caught thousands of miles away and frozen, not hauled in by local fishermen, as the menu claimed. It may be perfectly palatable - just not what the customer ordered. But sometimes mislabeled seafood can cause allergic reactions, violate dietary restrictions, or contain chemicals banned in the United States.

The Globe collected fish from 134 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets from Leominster to Provincetown, and hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on the samples. Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name - 48 percent.

The results underscore the dramatic lack of oversight in the seafood business compared with other food industries such as meat and poultry. Nationally, mislabeled fish is estimated to cost diners and the industry up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group.

It happens for a range of reasons, from outright fraud to a chef’s ignorance to the sometimes real difficulty of discerning one fillet from another. But industry specialists say money is commonly the motivator: It’s a way to increase profits - a cheaper fish sold as something more pricey - on the assumption that customers will not detect the difference.

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All 23 white tuna samples tested as some other type of fish, usually escolar, which is nicknamed the “ex-lax’’ fish by some in the industry because of the digestion problems it can cause.

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Frozen fish at grocery stores was far less frequently misidentified, with some sellers - including Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and BJ’s Wholesale Club - passing muster in all instances. At restaurants, mahi mahi and swordfish were correctly labeled in all samples tested.

The Globe chose to focus most of its testing on certain species, such as red snapper and tuna, because they have been identified by regulators as more likely to be mislabeled, so the findings do not represent all types of fish sold.

Seafood substitution can take place anywhere along the international route most wild and farmed fish take to a diner’s plate in the United States. The practice is carried out by fishermen, importers, wholesalers, restaurants, and stores.

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Recent studies indicate that between 20 percent and 70 percent or more of snapper, cod, grouper, and wild salmon are mislabeled at restaurants and stores. Oceana, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that is campaigning against seafood fraud, also discovered mislabeling this year when it conducted DNA tests of fresh and frozen fish at 15 Boston-area supermarkets. Nearly one in five fillets tested had the wrong species name, according to Oceana. Atlantic cod was the most frequently misrepresented fish.

Seafood substitution makes it harder for consumers to accept that some species, including red snapper, are overfished, since it regularly appears on restaurant menus.

“If people see something on the menu all the time, they may have no idea it is disappearing from the ocean,’’ said Beth Lowell, an Oceana campaign director.

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Beyond the economic toll, fish mislabeling can have serious health and environmental consequences.

In 2007, two customers at a Chicago restaurant were hospitalized after eating a toxin found in puffer fish. They had ordered monkfish.

That same year, a large shipment of escolar from Indonesia was labeled Atlantic cod and exported to Hong Kong. More than 600 people reportedly fell ill after eating it. Consumption of escolar can cause severe gastrointestinal problems because of the type of oil it contains.

The Globe found escolar being sold as white tuna, super-white tuna, or albacore at merchants such as FuGaKyu in Brookline, Kowloon in Saugus, H Mart supermarket in Burlington, and Oishii Sushi Bar in Chestnut Hill.

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Beyond the economic toll, fish mislabeling can have serious health and environmental consequences.

In 2007, two customers at a Chicago restaurant were hospitalized after eating a toxin found in puffer fish. They had ordered monkfish.

That same year, a large shipment of escolar from Indonesia was labeled Atlantic cod and exported to Hong Kong. More than 600 people reportedly fell ill after eating it. Consumption of escolar can cause severe gastrointestinal problems because of the type of oil it contains.

The Globe found escolar being sold as white tuna, super-white tuna, or albacore at merchants such as FuGaKyu in Brookline, Kowloon in Saugus, H Mart supermarket in Burlington, and Oishii Sushi Bar in Chestnut Hill.

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The Globe investigation also uncovered repeated instances where a nutritional fish was replaced by a less healthy offering.

For example, nearly all of the sushi restaurants surveyed replaced wild-caught red snapper with tilapia, a farm-raised species usually from Asia that has a significantly higher concentration of the fatty acid Omega 6, which some research suggests increases the risk of heart disease.

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Mislabeling can also result in consumers unknowingly eating species of fish whose existence may be in peril.

The Globe-sponsored testing showed that yellowfin tuna wontons at the chain restaurant Not Your Average Joe’s in Westborough were filled with chunks of southern bluefin tuna. That’s a critically endangered species, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a worldwide environmental network of governments, scientists, and nonprofits.

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