FISH FRAUD - Beware of Fish swap or Fake Fish in Restaurants and Seafood Shops

When is a sea bass not a sea bass? when it’s served as tilapia. Fish fraud happens everywhere, from endangered species passed off as snapper to deadly pufferfish sold with devastating consequences, how can you know that what you’re eating is what you’ve paid for? Seafood fraud includes swapping cheaper fish and passing them off as more expensive fillets, or putting false, incomplete or misleading information on a label.

List of fishes substituted for more expensive ones.

Asian catfish was found to be the type of fish most often sold as a different, higher value type of fish. The next commonly mislabelled species were sea bass and snapper.

Fish name	Substitute
Asian catfish	Asian catfish was sold as 18 different types of fishes like perch, grouper, sole, plaice, halibut.Also known in the UK as Vietnamese river cobbler , Basa, Swai, Panga, Pacific Dory, Pangasius is a cheap substitute for cod or haddock in uk and Hamour in gulf countries. This relative of catfish is the most common culprit in cases of seafood fraud. It might be called grouper or sole on the menu
Sea bass	It is substituted with giant perch or Nile tilapia, fish that should be less and is considered lower quality
Red snapper	Red snapper is substituted with catfish, rockfish, tilapia, nile perch, mahi mahi, mullet snapper, malabar blood snapper,Atlantic cod
Haddock	One of the most common substitutions was haddock for cod haddock is substituted with saithe
chilean sea bass	white bass, striped bass
hogfish	Indian grouper.
Grouper	tilapia , alaska pollock, nile perch, channel catfish, hake
wild salmon	atlantic farmed salmon
Atlantic cod	saithe, pollock, whiting, escolar
tropical sole	common sole
white tuna (albacore)	were actually escolar, This fatty, waxy fish causes digestive upset and diarrhea, also is high in mercury content.
gaint freshwater prawn	slipper lobster
Alaskan halibut	greenland turbot
dover sole	walleye
walleye	Alaskan pollock
redfish	channel catfish
black drum	sheephead
florida snapper	lavender jobfish
swordfish	mako shark
white snapper	white hake
bluefin tuna	bigeye tuna ,yellowfin tuna
mahi mahi	halibut, Yellowtail,
Anchovies	Icefish
orange roughy	john dory
Monk fish	pufferfish
Red mullet	spotted goatfish
shark meat with	nile perch
red drum	black drum
halibut	sea bass, deep water cape hake
yellow perch	white perch
caviar (sturgeon species)	other fish Roe
walleye	sauger
chum salmom	pink salmon
scallops	skate wings
salmon	rainbow trout or steelhead trout
blue crabmeat	imported crabmeat
abalone	top shell

Imported seafood was sometimes marketed as locally-caught, while vulnerable species like the Atlantic halibut were falsely advertised as a more sustainable catch.

SEAFOOD fraud is a serious global problem”, one in five fish sold has been mislabelled. Seafood fraud can happen at each step of the supply chain – the restaurant, the distributor, or the processing and packaging phase. You may not be getting the fish you paid for. In most cases, the motivation is economic—slippery restaurateurs frequently serve up cheaper fish than they advertise to cut costs.


Here’s how to avoid seafood fraud.

Buying whole fish is cool! Not only does a whole fish prevent mislabeling, a clear eye and nice sheen on the body will tell you that the fish is good quality! Plus, fish heads make for a great seafood stock. A whole fish, is far easier to identify “than a fillet in a plastic pack. If you’re worry about filleting one yourself, buy the fish and ask your fishmonger to fillet it for you.”Food standards authorities can now use DNA testing to identify fish, but the average customer merely comes equipped with their own senses.
Not only is fish priced lower when it is abundant during its peak season, fish is mislabeled more when it is not in season.
If the price is too good to be true, it probably is a sign that it is a mislabeled product.
The four most common fish that are most likely to be mislabeled for species swap include tuna, snapper, salmon and grouper - always ask extra questions when buying these fish.

Along with ripping off consumers, the consequences of seafood fraud include:

Directly threatens human health. Swapping one fish species for another that may be riddled with contaminants, toxins or allergens can make people sick.
Creates a market for illegal fishing by making it easy to launder illegally caught seafood products through the EU market. This undermines conservation efforts to prevent overfishing and accidental capture of at-risk species and hurts honest fishermen.
Mislabeling fish makes it difficult for consumers to make eco-friendly choices.
Misleads consumers about the true availability of seafood and the state of the marine environment. Because mislabeling maintains the appearance of a steady supply of popular fish species despite severe overfishing, the general public is unaware that the species is in serious trouble.

Consumers can also make a difference. Consider asking questions such as:

What species of fish am I ordering?
Is it wild or farmed?
How was it caught?
Is the price too good to be true?