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.
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