Food fraud: Fishy goings on

By 17. November 2015Blog, Quality

Over two years after the Oceana report that found that one third of fish sold in the States was mislabelled, a new report on the state of fish fraud in the heart of Europe paints a similar picture.

The fraud is probably carried out for the age old reason, profit. Expensive fish are substituted for cheaper fish and therefore the fraudsters maximise their profits. But the report, available from the KU Leuven website, states that this is not just a case of being fooled into eating a cheaper fish, or the overfishing problem. As the fish is untraceable fish it could mean that it has not been subject to regular health and sanitary checks.

The worst fraud found was for bluefin tuna. 95% was not what it should have been, 72% were the cheaper yellowfin tuna and 22% were the bigeye tuna which is known to be overfished.

One thing that the horsegate scandal should have shown us is that our food supply chains need to be policed better. Although not damming enough to be a fishgate, let’s hope this report brings to the surface this continuing problem and that things are done to help curb this fraud.

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