Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, looking to reduce fraud in the labeling of seafood, has created a new tool for the battle.
- The federal agency is offering an online learning module aimed at helping state regulators, retailers, and seafood processors better understand the rules surrounding seafood labels.
- The move follows investigations by reporters and advocacy groups that say as much as 70% of seafood sold as species like red snapper, Atlantic cod, or wild salmon are in fact other, less expensive species, bearing false labels.
Dive Insight:
The scope of the fake seafood problem in America is extraordinary, so perhaps this new module from the FDA will help.
A key factor that enables the fraud is that so few Americans know much about fish. That's the same reason you can visit almost any retailer anywhere in the country and find a fish - obviously dead for days, frozen, and then thawed - sold as "fresh." But that's changing, as foodies and e-Vangelists acquire and spread knowledge. It seems more likely that if Americans ever do learn to recognize fish species, it will be because they learned to do so from a Mommy blogger, not a federal regulator.