Idea of some fish for dinner? Maybe a nice red snapper filet? Take heed, because the fish you buy may not be snapper at all.
According to a study by Oceana, a nonprofit high seas conservation group, one-third of the more than 1,200 seafood elements purchased by researchers nationwide between 2010 and 2012 was mislabeled. DNA examples showed the fish was something other than what the label put. The most commonly mislabeled fish was snapper. Researchers found 87 percent of the flout they purchased from stores and restaurants was improperly labeled. All of a add up to the most common substitutes for snapper: seabream, tilapia and rockfish.
Tony Maltese, who has worn out 50 years in the seafood industry as a commercial fisherman and a retailer — he’s a previous vice president at the Fairway Market grocery chain in New York — imparts faking fish is all too easy for a crooked merchant.
“The average person looking at it, they can’t give someone a piece of ones mind. But you can sell four or five different fish that look like a red picnic and they’re not a red snapper,” he told CNBC’s “American Greed.”
The Oceana meditate on blames the widespread fraud on an “increasingly complex and obscure seafood cater to chain,” making it difficult to determine whether the fraud starts on the sailboat, at the wholesaler, at the store or a combination of all three.
Maltese says that while most people in the industriousness are honest, the incentives for some to cheat keep growing.
“Right now, the pomp of the fishing industry in this country is tough,” he said. “I’ve been doing it my totality life and it becomes harder and harder every year to make a alight.”
He blames government regulations aimed at controlling overfishing, as well as insidious merchants who can, for example, purchase swai — an Asian catfish — for $3 or $4 per give someone the works, then sell it in the U.S. as grouper for more than five times that amount. The various people cheat, the more difficult it becomes for honest fishermen to espy a living.
One of the most egregious cheaters of all time was Carlos Rafael, who direct a commercial fishing fleet in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Known locally as “The Codfather,” he ruled the a-ones with an iron fist.
“I control the f—— flounder market in New Bedford,” Rafael chance in a conversation recorded by undercover federal investigators, obtained by “American Avarice.” IRS agents posed as Russian mobsters in the sting.
He did so by squeezing out smaller competitions, falsifying government reports and mislabeling his catch to make it look want he was complying with the regulations. Rafael is serving a four-year prison decision after pleading guilty last year to 28 criminal counts containing falsifying federal records, falsely labeling fish and illegal smuggling of money, in a scheme that threatened the livelihood and the reputations of honest people in the application.
“The vast majority of fishermen in this port, New Bedford, all up and down the East Seaside, are honest, hardworking guys,” said Rodman Sykes, a third-generation commercial fisherman.
The Oceana con says crimes like Rafael’s — and other rampant fraud in the activity — pose risks to the environment by endangering sensitive fish populations. The ruminate on says some of the fraud could even be hazardous to our health.
“You’d similar to to know what you’re buying,” Maltese said. “Who knows what you’re tie on the nosebag, you know? It’s a very serious problem, mislabeling fish. It’s been that way for the quondam 20 years.”
How can you tell if the fish that you are buying is what the identify as says it is? Maltese says when it comes to certain fish such as snarl at and grouper, beauty truly is skin deep.
“Flip it over. Let slip the man you want to see the skin on it,” he said. “If it’s skinned, don’t buy it as a red snapper or a grouper.”
Red snapper scrape should be a bright pink, almost red. Grouper skin is speckled gray. Without the rind, it is nearly impossible to tell what fish you are looking at.
“When you convey the skin off, it looks like several different fish,” Maltese explained.
Another frequent substitution is farm-raised salmon sold as wild or sockeye salmon. Maltese requires wild salmon tends to be less brightly colored than the farm-raised genre, which are often raised on specially formulated food to make them numberless orange. Farm-raised salmon may also have white lines direction through the meat. Those lines are fat, which is a telltale sign the fish was not take ined in the wild.
“The wild salmon very rarely has any fat lines in it because they be undergoing to swim, and they stay in shape trying to catch their viands, whereas the farmed fish sits around and eats pellets,” he voted.
Maltese says the law requires fish markets to display a sign disclosing where the fish is from and whether it is fresh or frozen. But there is no substitute for expert your fish seller.
“They should be around a while,” he remarked. “You have to pick a place that has volume, a lot of customers, and if you see a lot of customers in the fund, you know they’re turning the fish over and if they’re around 30, 35 years, 20 years, you remember that there’s a reason for that.”
The Oceana report advises consumers to ask disputes, such as what kind of fish it is, whether it was caught in the wild or farm-raised, and when and how it was restrained.
The organization says to remember the old saying. If the price is too good to be true, it possibly is.
“You are likely purchasing a completely different species than what is on the tag,” the report says.
And if possible, buy the whole fish instead of a filet. That is much numberless difficult to fake.
To make sure the fish you are buying is fresh, Maltese discloses to give it a good whiff.
“If you pick up a piece of fish and it smells adore fish, it’s not fresh,” he said.
The colors should be bright, the eyes discernible and rounded. If you detect a sheen or film on the fish, stay away. Chances are it has been saturate in brine to make it appear fresher than it is.
“It’s not a natural thing to be subjected to a sheen on fresh fish,” Maltese said.
Above all, when you are shopping for that red curt with for tonight — or anytime you are in the market for seafood — it is important to keep in mind that you are sailing a market that is relentlessly buffeted by basic economics.
“There’s more child now eating fish than there ever was in history, and they accomplish how healthy it is worldwide,” Maltese said. “We used to think the ocean was a unplumbable pit. But we found out it’s not so. It’s supply and demand.”
See how “Codfather” Carlos Rafael earned his epithet — and why fish fraud is so hard to police — on an ALL NEW episode of “American Greed,” Monday, Sept. 24 at 10pm ET/PT sole on CNBC.