More than 10 per cent of the seafood sold in Australia is not what’s on the label and threatened species sometimes wind up on the plate, DNA tests suggest.
Researchers who DNA tested 672 seafood products sold at Australian supermarkets, fish markets and restaurants found 11.8 per cent didn’t match what was on the label.
At a restaurant in Western Australia, something generically labelled as shark was actually a piece of smooth hammerhead, a species classed as vulnerable globally.
“In one instance, we found flake served as battered fish and chips was actually school shark, which is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of threatened species.”
Dr Wilcox said the results were timely, with the Australian government considering measures to prevent the importation of illegal, unreported and unregulated seafood.
Mislabeling of fish is a huge problem globally. I don’t buy fish from the grocery store anymore because I’m not confident at all that it’s fresh or even that it is what they say it is.