Consequences of seafood mislabeling for marine populations and fisheries management

Abstract

Over the past decade, seafood mislabeling has been increasingly documented, raising public concern over the identity, safety, and sustainability of seafood. Negative outcomes from seafood mislabeling are suspected to be substantial and pervasive as seafood is the world’s most highly traded food commodity. Here we provide empirical systems-level evidence that enabling conditions exist for seafood mislabeling in the United States (US) to lead to negative impacts on marine populations and support consumption of products from poorly managed fisheries. Using trade, production, and mislabeling data, we determine that substituted products are more likely to be imported than the product listed on the label. We also estimate that about 60% of US mislabeled apparent consumption associated with the established pairs involves products that are exclusively wild caught. We use these wild-caught pairs to explore population and management consequences of mislabeling. We find that, compared to the product on the label, substituted products come from fisheries with less healthy stocks and greater impacts of fishing on other species. Additionally, substituted products are from fisheries with less effective management and with management policies less likely to mitigate impacts of fishing on habitats and ecosystems compared with the label product. While we provide systematic evidence of environmental impacts from food fraud, our results also highlight the current challenges with production, trade, and mislabeling data, which increase the uncertainty surrounding seafood mislabeling consequences. More integrated, holistic, and collaborative approaches are needed to understand mislabeling impacts and design interventions to minimize mislabeling.

Fraud in highly appreciated fish detected from DNA in Europe may undermine the Development Goal of sustainable fishing in Africa

“…Another type of fraudulent mislabeling occurs as a consequence of illegal, unreported and/or unregulated fishing (IUU); in those cases the defrauder benefits from selling inadvertently species that are often poorly managed and wild caught 15 . Examples are the covered exploitation of protected species, (e.g., high levels of mislabeling concealing endangered species have reported in sharks 16 , 17 , or selling individuals caught over quota as suggested in Miller et al 18 . This is especially pernicious not only for species conservation but also for the society, because selling IUU catch undermines consumer’s awareness and conscious efforts of sustainable consumption 19 .…”

DNA Analysis Detects Different Mislabeling Trend by Country in European Cod Fillets

“…Differences in mislabeling have been observed between different selling points, such as restaurants or catering services and retailers and supermarkets, with recent high rates of mislabeling in German mass catering [ 11 , 12 ]. Beyond the environmental and conservation implications, due to over- or under-representation on the catching statistics [ 13 ], mislabeling can also influence public health, as surrogate species can induce allergic outbreaks in sensitive consumers [ 14 ]. Therefore, appropriate labelling is very important from any point of view.…”

Interventions for improving the productivity and environmental performance of global aquaculture for future food security

“…Based on DNA barcoding, it has been reported that as much as 30% of all traded seafood is incorrectly labeled as other species. 103,104 Mislabeling can be unintentional, through misidentification and confusion over common names, but most is probably deliberate, with the ambition to achieve higher market prices or to market unsustainably or illegally harvested species. 104,105 Given such widespread mislabeling for a characteristic as fundamental as ''species,'' it will be difficult to assign trustworthy environmental profiles to aquatic foods.…”

“…103,104 Mislabeling can be unintentional, through misidentification and confusion over common names, but most is probably deliberate, with the ambition to achieve higher market prices or to market unsustainably or illegally harvested species. 104,105 Given such widespread mislabeling for a characteristic as fundamental as ''species,'' it will be difficult to assign trustworthy environmental profiles to aquatic foods. Better documented trace-back systems are an effective countermeasure here, 105 and there are currently several initiatives for tracking seafood using blockchain technology (e.g., fishcoin.co and traceability-dialogue.org).…”