All too often the seafood we eat is not what it says on the menu, potentially posing health and environmental risks as fish fraud, is to be found in a variety of guises around the world – and a growing number of tools exist to combat it, according to a new FAO report.
Food fraud in the fisheries and aquaculture sector, produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through cooperation between its Fisheries and Aquaculture Division and the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, provides an overview of the complex field of fraud and a review of how novel analytical techniques can help detect it.
Fish fraud is defined in the report as ‘a deliberate practice intended to deceive’ and, depending on the type of deceit it can pose risks to biodiversity, human health or economic systems.
The main categories of fish fraud are adulteration (adding colouring to make tuna look fresher), counterfeit (imitation shrimp made from starch-based compounds), simulation (packaging surimi to seem like crab meat), diversion (distributing legitimate products outside of their intended markets), misbranding (such as incorrect claims about sustainability), overrun (involving overfishing), species substitution (selling tilapia as red snapper), tampering and mislabeling (involving origins and even expiry dates), and theft.
There is no official estimate of how prevalent fraud is in the $195 billion global fisheries and aquaculture sector, but empirical studies suggest that 20% of the trade may be subject to some type of fraud, notably higher than for meat and fruits and vegetables, largely due to the vast diversity of species in the sector.
The report advocates harmonised labelling requirements, the mandatory inclusion of scientific names where possible, and better traceability systems. The use of advanced techniques ranging from enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, stable isotope analysis and nuclear magnetic resonance can be effective, although not available to all, while portable X-ray fluorescence and machine-learning models are innovations that can aid regulation.
Although thousands of fish fraud studies have been carried out, demonstrating the widespread nature of the problem in every continent save Antarctica, there are no solid baseline studies to estimate its prevalence. The global scale of fish consumption, targeting over 12,000 seafood species, the diversity of fraud types, and the lack of standardised regulatory or legal definitions of fraud, make global estimations difficult to obtain.
Some studies suggest that up to 30% of seafood products may be mislabeled in restaurants, and while much as a third of aquatic products sold in the United States may not be what is written on the packaging, less than 1% of imports are tested.
Given its complexity, identifying fish fraud is not straightforward, but the report goes into considerable detail about how advances in science can contribute to tackling fraud. A standard method to determine whether and how many times a seafood product has been frozen has so far proven elusive, but differences in the fatty-acid composition of wild and farmed fish may be used to detect fraud, as well as carbon and nitrogen ratios to determine the geographical origin of major commercial fish species.
The report also reviews a number of concerted efforts to tackle cases of suspected fraud in Italy, and Argentina and the United States of America.
