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Posted on 09/22/2004 7:15:52 PM PDT by vannrox
Scientists Find 75 Percent Of Red Snapper Sold In Stores Is Really Some Other Species
CHAPEL HILL ? While learning in a course how to extract, amplify and sequence the genetic material known as DNA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate students got a big surprise. So did their marine science professors.
In violation of federal law, more than 75 percent of fish tested and sold as tasty red snapper in stores in eight states were other species. How much of the mislabeling was unintentional or fraud is unknown, said Dr. Peter B. Marko, assistant professor of marine sciences at UNC?s College of Arts and Sciences.
"Red snapper is the most sought-after snapper species and has the highest prices, and many people, including me, believe it tastes best," Marko said. "Mislabeling to this extent not only defrauds consumers, but also risks adversely affecting estimates of stock size for this species if it influences the reporting of catch data used in fisheries management. The potential for this kind of bias in fisheries data depends on at what point in the commercial industry fish are mislabeled, which is something that we currently know little about."
A report on his group?s research appears in the July 15 issue of the journal Nature. Co-authors are his colleague Dr. Amy L. Moran, research assistant professor of marine sciences, and graduate students Sarah C. Lee, Amber M. Rice, Joel M. Gramling, Tara M. Fitzhenry, Justin S. McAlister and George R. Harper.
"The red snapper, or Lutjanus campechanus, is found in offshore waters around coral reefs and rocky outcroppings and is one of the most economically important fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico, with greater total landings?than any other snapper species," Marko and colleagues wrote. "In 1996, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and the U.S. Department of Commerce declared that L. campechanus was grossly overfished and called for strict management measures to restore stocks to sustainable levels.
"Such restrictions create an economic incentive for seafood substitution, where less valuable species are mislabeled and sold under the names of more expensive ones. Substitutions among closely related fish are difficult to detect, because most distinguishing features are lost during processing."
The team conducted molecular analyses of 22 fish bought from nine vendors in Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. They found 17, or 77 percent, of the samples sold as red snapper were other species.
"Our work has a margin of error of 17 percent, meaning that between 60 percent and 94 percent of fish sold as red snapper in the United States are mislabeled," Marko said.
Among those sold as red snapper were lane snapper and vermilion snapper, two other species from the western Atlantic Ocean. Also surprising was that more than half the DNA sequences came either from fish from other regions of the world such as the western Pacific or from rare species about which little is known, he said.
"The remarkable extent of product mislabeling of red snapper threatens to distort the status of fish stocks in the eyes of consumers, contributing to a false impression that the supply of marine species is keeping up with demand," Marko said.
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Fester likes Red Snapper :^D
Hmmmmmmmmmmm....RED SNAPPER! Very Tasty!
Snap
I love my fish heads
I take them to the movies...
Crap
I knew a girl who used to go fishing with a bunch of us guys and she always came back with.... nevermind
Hmmm.
Wonder if that applies to so-called scallops that in truth, are just pollock and white fish cut with a cookie cutter?
Very common to find in Chinese restaurants, particularly those with an "all-you-can-eat" seafood buffet.
I would venture to say that perhaps 75% of the public does not truly know what a scallop tastes like.
Or looks like, for that matter.
Is CBS in any way connected to/responsible for fish labeling?
I'd like to know how they derived that margin of error, when DNA technology is promoted as virtually infallible. Maybe they took a bunch of short cuts.
Mmmm Red Snapper with champagne sauce
steelhead and salmon are similar fish with a high oil content
Red snapper is very differnt from both of those fish.
You must be Up North eh?
There's something fishy about that report.
ping
I think scallops are cut out of stingrays, not whitefish.
Probably a good thing that they are selling other things for red snapper, I doubt there's enough red snapper to go around.
Nonetheless, I've actually had lunch there a few times. One day, while I was getting ready to (or, as we say in NC, "fixing to") order lunch at the bar, the lovely and doubly talented bartender leaned over (which was fairly thrilling in itself) and whispered to me that "today, the grouper really is grouper").
It was pretty good, too -- at least, what I remember of it. I was a bit distracted.
Let me just say that, this whole thread sounds a little fishy...
It amazes me people bother to eat any fresh water fish at all, really.
100% sure of the individual fish. not so sure about every fish being sold as red snapper.
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