Fishing with Rod Discussion Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Food agency to investigate fishmongers nabbed by The Sun  (Read 2528 times)

troutbreath

  • Old Timer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2908
  • I does Christy
Food agency to investigate fishmongers nabbed by The Sun
« on: June 05, 2009, 07:59:26 AM »

Food agency to investigate fishmongers nabbed by The Sun
 
More than one quarter of 21 fish samples DNA tested were wrongly labelled
 
By Larry Pynn, Vancouver SunJune 5, 2009
 

 
Something's fishy
Photograph by: .., Vancouver Sun graphicVANCOUVER — The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says it will investigate The Vancouver Sun’s findings of mislabelled retail fish products in Metro Vancouver based on DNA testing.

Alison Pinsent, a national compliance manager with CFIA, said in an interview from Ottawa that her office is responsible for enforcing food labelling laws and routinely acts on complaints.

“We’ll follow up,” she said. “We do verify restaurants are advertising food accurately. That is our mandate.”

Pinsent noted that the Food and Drugs Act prohibits misleading practices in the sale of food, including seafood, and provides penalties of up to $50,000 and/or six months in jail on summary conviction and $250,000 and/or three years in jail on indictable conviction.

But just how aggressively Ottawa enforces the act remains a mystery. For two days running, CFIA could not supply any statistics about enforcement actions taken in B.C. related to mislabelled seafood.

Pinsent said she is unaware of any recent charges for fish mislabelling in the province, noting inspectors prefer to work with offenders to ensure compliance rather than rush to court.

Bob Hanner, a DNA expert at the University of Guelph in Ontario, whose lab conducted the DNA tests for The Sun, noted there are also potential health risks, including allergic reactions, associated with mislabelled seafood.

In 2007, pufferfish imported to the U.S. from China and sold as monkfish were recalled after two people in the Chicago area became ill. Pufferfish contain tetrodotoxin, which can cause death and cannot be destroyed by cooking or freezing.

More than one-quarter of The Sun’s 21 samples analysed for DNA were mislabelled.

The cases included Coney Island Seafood in White Rock selling southeast Asian catfish as cod, Speed’s Pub in Ladner selling pollock as cod, Bon Sushi in Surrey selling hake as crabmeat, and Takumi Japanese Restaurant in West Vancouver selling bastard halibut (also known as olive flounder) as halibut sushi.

Takumi owner Cathy Akaike said Thursday the menu would be changed to state flounder (a product imported from Japan) and not halibut, but emphasized there was never any intent to deceive customers.

Hanner said he supports also labelling seafood products with the scientific name of the fish as a way to reduce the uncertainty of common names, of which 30 are allowable for cod alone in Canada.

Hanner said regulations are largely ineffective if government does not have the funds to implement them on a large scale. Industry could voluntarily get involved, perhaps through groups such as the Marine Stewardship Council, which works at arm’s length to certify sustainably caught seafood.

He said some consumers might be willing to pay more to be assured of what they are eating, adding clearer labelling would help to ensure that fish stocks at risk are not winding up on someone’s plate. Better enforcement would also reduce the potential for one operator to undercut a competitor by substituting cheaper product.

Hanner is associate director of the Canadian Barcode of Life Network in the department of integrative biology at the University of Guelph.

The barcode network is an ever-expanding DNA database — 6,500 fish have been listed internationally so far, with at least another 24,000 still to go — designed to assist scientists in identifying a particular biological specimen.

He noted that since the pufferfish poisonings, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been working with him on the expanded use of barcoding. “We haven’t seen that kind of proactive movement in Canada yet,” he said.

lpynn@vancouversun.com



Click here to view a photo gallery related to this story.


Click here to view a video related to this story.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Logged
another SLICE of dirty fish perhaps?

ejeffrey

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 101
Re: Food agency to investigate fishmongers nabbed by The Sun
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2009, 09:44:40 AM »

I guess you can't trust what you are getting unless you catch it and ID it yourself. Shame on these guys for lying to their customers.
Logged

Sam Salmon

  • Old Timer
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1239
Re: Food agency to investigate fishmongers nabbed by The Sun
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2009, 10:41:56 AM »

It's a hack job of an article by some of the sleaziest most clueless individuals imaginable.

Hake sold as Crab?

That's Surimi which is in every California Roll-some places advertise as Crab some as Krab many don't mention what's in the roll at all

Olive Flounder sold as Halibut?

Few eat ordinary Halibut as Sashimi (not that great) my guess is that's it's just a translation mistake otherwise why sell expensive imported Flounder as common local Halibut (hirame)?

Should someone be taken to court because they picked the wrong term from the 400,000 words in the English language?

And what's with the constant mention of Pufferfish, Pufferfish, Pufferfish when it's not sold here-who are they trying to frighten and why?

I could go on and on and on and on but you get my drift-it's all much ado about very very little no one is being cheated at all.

A larger issue is how desperate the Vancouver Sun is to wreck people's livelihoods even as their own life blood-readership-drops through the floorboards.

Look at how many papers have disappeared south of the border, the National Post here is on it's last legs.

Most people under 30 never read a broadsheet at all and advertising revenues reflect this-Craigslist had killed newspaper Classified adds forever so who's gonna pay for the Vancouver Sun?

No one that's who, look at the blatant shill 'comments' at the end of that article-these people are running scared and showing their true colours.
Logged