Prevalence and Implications of Seafood Mislabeling in Global Seafood Markets

Undergraduates: Caroline Jasperse, Brittany Cooper

Faculty Advisor: John Bruno
Department: Biology

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The deliberate mislabeling of seafood products has been documented on a global scale, but with little data and few papers on the subject, trends and rates in seafood fraud have not been recognized. The goal of this paper is to estimate the rate of seafood mislabeling. This is a growing issue in the global seafood industry as fish consumption per capita increases significantly and fish stocks continue to decline with overfishing1, 7. Seafood distributors aim to maximize their profits by passing off less desirable seafood as more in-demand species, harming consumer¿¿¿s health and our marine environment alike2, 4. By conducting a systematic literature review and compiling data on seafood mislabeling from global studies, I found that 24.23% of 4,709 seafood samples were mislabeled. Our results indicate that Catfish and Snapper are the most commonly mislabeled seafood, and that cooked samples are more likely to be fraudulent than fresh or frozen samples. Rates of mislabeling by continent vary widely with South America having the highest rate of seafood fraud and Europe having the lowest rate. The United States was found to have a rate of mislabeling of 35%, with the Northeast region of the country having the highest prevalence of mislabeling. More data needs to be collected on mislabeling by type of product and by type of vendor to determine an accurate trend in seafood fraud, as well as how seafood labels such as ¿¿¿wild-caught¿¿¿ and ¿¿¿sustainable¿¿¿ affect mislabeling rates.