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A recent investigation by Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation group, found that of 449 fish from more than 250 restaurants, seafood markets and grocery stores across the country, 21 percent of samples were mislabeled.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise. Oceana had previously published another staggering report in 2013 that brought to light the insanely rampant practice of mislabeling fish. Oceana reported that after red snapper, one of the most mislabeled fish on the market is fresh tuna, and the practice is still going strong today. |
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President Obama introduced a rule back in 2016 that aims to curb this fraud by requiring 25 percent of imported seafood to be traced back to the boat on which it was caught. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be duped at a local grocery store, buying tuna that is clearly not real tuna.
The Oceana report focused on fresh tuna, the kind you can order at sushi places, seafood restaurants and grocery stores. Pre-cooked canned or packaged tuna was not a part of this Oceana report, though it comes with its own host of sustainability and transparency issues.
On a recent family vacation in upstate New York, my family bought fresh “tuna” at the seafood section of the grocery store, and in our vacation-euphoric state we simply marveled at the good price. We trusted the label to be honest, only to quickly realize our mistake. The fish we actually got was most likely escolar, which isn’t even closely related to tuna. |
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