The US$195 billion global seafood industry is “increasingly vulnerable” to fraud, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has warned.
This fraud ranges from selling tilapia as red snapper and farmed fish as wild, to covertly creating imitation shrimp from moulded fish paste or starch‑based compounds, it notes in a new report.
The report finds that the global probability of a fisheries or aquaculture product being fraudulent is 20.6 per cent, followed by meat at 13.4 per cent, then fruits and vegetables at 10.4 per cent. Technologies such as DNA barcoding that can precisely identify species are vital to tackling the problem, the study’s authors say.
“Food fraud in fisheries is a global issue. What is worrying is the scale and persistence of the problem, and the fact that it affects every region and every market segment,” Esther Garrido Gamarro, a fisheries officer at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), tells Dialogue Earth.
She adds that the work underscores how fraud is not just an economic crime. It can mask serious food safety issues that harm consumers. And by making it easier or more financially attractive to sell things that are not supposed to be sold, this fraud can also add pressure to endangered and threatened species.
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Fraud thrives where oversight is fragmented, where traceability is weak, and where incentives for compliance are low.
Esther Garrido Gamarro, fisheries officer, UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Different ways of faking it
There are many ways in which seafood can be fraudulent. One that is thought to be particularly prevalent is the practice of serving a consumer one species while telling them they have been given another. This is most common in restaurants, where some studies suggest that 30 per cent of seafood may be mislabelled.
In some locations, the report notes even higher rates of fraud have been detected: work in Peru found 78 per cent of ceviche was not what it claimed to be; scientists who tested seafood in China found 75.5 per cent of it was a species not even in the same family as expected. (In taxonomic ranking, “family” is two positions higher than “species”.)
Gamarro says that in recent years several countries have strengthened regulations, expanded traceability requirements, and invested in laboratories for detecting fraud. International cooperation has also improved.
“At the same time, fraudsters adapt quickly, and the globalisation of trade in fisheries and aquaculture and the complexity of our sector translates into vulnerability,” she adds.
Follow the money
The reason for all of this fraud is money.
In the US, farmed salmon can sell for around US$4 per fish, the report notes, while wild fish of the same weight fetch approximately US$8. Expensive species such as cod, flounder and pink cusk eel are also prime targets.
The latter can be US$12 per kg; the temptation to mislabel endangered spotback skate valued at US$3.80 per kg as pink cusk eel is obvious.
There are a number of techniques fraud fighters can use to detect such substitutions. These include looking at the DNA of samples, chemical analysis, fish isotope analysis, and even X-ray analysis using a portable device.
The report, says Gamarro, is a summary of what the sector is facing: “This is the first step. It is a warning.”
But fraud is not just a technical issue, she stresses, it is a governance issue:
“Fraud thrives where oversight is fragmented, where traceability is weak, and where incentives for compliance are low. Policymakers should see fraud prevention in our sector as an investment in fair trade, public health and sustainable resource management.”
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons licence.
