I suspect the reason for this is the hidden secret of seafood and fresh water fish: that a lot of it isn’t what it is labeled to be.
For example, taking a cookie cutter to whitefish and calling it a scallop, or selling Escolar and Oilfish (snake mackeral) as “butterfish”, “white tuna”, or “cod” though they contain indigestible wax esters that give people diarrhea.
Red snapper is hardly ever actual red snapper. Only about 7% sold nationwide is genuine.
Farm salmon is sold as wild salmon. Pangasius is sold as grouper, sole, and cod, tilapia sold as red snapper and Atlantic farmed salmon sold as wild or king salmon.
Other bad fish sold as good fish include Ciguatera fish, frequently contaminated with toxic bacteria; good tuna, mackerel, skipjack, bonito, mahi mahi, bluefish, and marlin that are contaminated with scombrotoxin and salmonella bacteria.
And then there are otherwise good fish, that for some people can provoke an intense allergic response so must be very clearly labeled: pollock, salmon, cod, tuna, snapper, eel, and tilapia.
Most commonly foisted off as catfish is Asian pangasius (or ponga), which is also sold as sole, flounder, and grouper.
DNA testing has confirmed that one-third of the 1,215 fish samples collected from 674 retail outlets in 21 states were mislabeled, according to FDA guidelines.
Then this is a matter of criminal fraud. We do have extant laws in place for this. If the retailers are not guilty of that fraud, they should not be treated as though they were perpetrating it; the crime fighters need to attack the fraud at the source.
Yep. If there weren’t rampant fraud through the fish distribution chain I’d be more sympathetic to claims of over-regulation.