KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Restaurants in four cities across the country have been caught charging patrons for top-notch seafood while actually peddling inferior fillets. After KSHB-TV in Kansas City found that Bice Bistro was selling catfish instead of the advertised grouper at its Kansas City, Mo. eatery, the restaurant chain’s president, Raffaele Ruggeri, admitted that his company regularly changes species without updating its menu. "We would consider changing the name on our menu to accurately reflect all species of fish being served nationally but in no way will we change the product as we stand by its quality,” Ruggeri said in a statement. His company, Bice Restaurant Holding, owns 40 restaurants around the world, with locations in Naples and Palm Beach, Fla., Glendale, Ariz., as well as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, according to the company Web site. Lawyers at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission are reviewing KSHB's report to see if Bice's practice amounts to false advertising and will decide whether to launch an investigation, said agency spokeswoman Betsy Lordan. The FTC never has investigated cases of fish fraud but has the authority to do so, Lordan said. The Scripps investigation found that both suppliers and restaurants engage in substitution.
A Scripps Television Station Group investigation in Kansas City, Mo., Phoenix; Baltimore, and Tampa, Fla., found that in 23 out of 38 meals tested the fish species was incorrectly marketed and billed as fancier fare. For instance, fish listed on the menus as "red snapper" was often found to be far-cheaper tilapia, while "grouper" was really catfish, the investigation showed. Such substitutions can save a restaurant a bundle -- while red snapper fillets cost around $5.20 a pound wholesale, tilapia goes for just $2.20 a pound, according to food commodity analysts. The Scripps reports, based on DNA analyses of the fish, provide more evidence of the pervasiveness of fish fraud in U.S. restaurants. Although similar testing has been done in New York City and Mobile, Ala., the Scripps project is the first to look at several cities in different parts of the country. It also is the most extensive look at the incidence of fish mislabeling since a National Marine Fisheries Service report found that 37 percent of fish and 13 percent of other seafood (such as shellfish) were mislabeled over a nine-year period ending in 1997. Spencer Garrett, who heads the fisheries service laboratory that conducted that study, thinks fish fraud has increased since then. But he doesn’t know for sure, because no follow-up study has been done.
The Scripps investigation found:
-- The president of an international restaurant chain, Bice Bistro, admitted to swapping catfish for grouper after NBC Action News KSHB-TV tested fish in Bice's Kansas City, Mo. location.
-- JK Sushi in Phoenix changed its menus the day after ABC15 News KNXV discovered that the advertised red snapper was actually tilapia.
-- The owner of a Baltimore restaurant, Luna Del Sol, apologized afterABC2 News WMAR found that the "grilled grouper" -- priced at more than $25 --was in fact Asian catfish.
-- When Acropolis Greek Tavern in Tampa, Fla. was caught serving catfish instead of grouper, the eatery's owner told WFTS ABC Action News that the fish suppliers -- and not him -- were to blame.
Industry experts say fish fraud comes in a variety of forms: substitution and mislabeling at the restaurant level, misrepresentation by restaurant suppliers, and fraud by domestic fish importers and foreign exporters. Los Angeles federal prosecutor Joseph Johns, who broke up a fish-fraud ring last year, said the scope of the problem is huge. "There's just an unbelievable amount of fraud being perpetrated on the American public," Johns said. "It's high time somebody really (looks) into this." But government oversight has been scant, Scripps found. Industry experts say that because the federal government isn't tracking mislabeled fish in restaurants or supermarkets, they have no idea about how often it's happening -- or how much money it's costing the public. Americans consume about 5 billion pounds of seafood a year. While federal authorities want to understand the scale of the fraud, they don’t have the resources to address it head-on, said Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, a Washington-based trade group that wants closer oversight of fish imports.
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