From overfishing to species mislabeling to slavery, the seafood industry is rife with dilemmas and abuses. Navigating the fish counter is an eater’s nightmare. Conscientious shoppers can download a guide to sustainable seafood published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program, but the publication assumes that restaurants, distributors, and suppliers behave honestly and can be taken at their word. Evidence points to the contrary: In 2013, the non-profit organization Oceana conducted genetic tests on fish samples from cities across the country, including Austin, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., and found that 59 percent of the fish sold as “tuna” at restaurants and grocery stores was mislabeled.
If you can’t even be sure you’re eating the species you were sold, how can you know with any confidence where your fish came from or whether it was caught sustainably and legally?
“One of the big challenges for anyone working in the seafood industry is being able to identify the provenance of where the seafood comes from, and that the claims intended to adhere to that product are indeed truthful claims,” says Alfred “Bubba” Cook, Western and Central Pacific tuna program manager at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). “By and large, you can’t really tell where your seafood comes from with any granularity.”
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