In a February report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which concentrates on food safety inspections, for giving short shrift to detecting and preventing fish fraud. The GAO investigators urged the FDA to expand its focus to include false labeling and to collaborate with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to root it out.
But the FDA, citing budget constraints, said it is not planning to scrutinize fish for misrepresentation, said agency spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek.
"Species substitution isn't our top concern," Kwisnek said. "But we do take it seriously."
Also pleading a shortage of resources, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service -- the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- says it doesn't have the manpower to conduct spot checks on fish imports for labeling accuracy more than every month or two, said Alan Wolf, NOAA assistant special agent in charge for the northwest region of the country. The service spends most of its time protecting endangered fish species.
Garrett, who directs the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, thinks fish inspections for veracity should be mandatory. Currently, federal inspectors examine for quality only a third of fish imports under a voluntary program in which large purchasers, such as supermarkets and restaurant chains, pay a fee for the tests supermarket and restaurant chains, and these clients pay a fee for the tests, Garrett said.
"We have to tighten our [inspection] program and then demand the same from our exporters," Garrett said, calling for stronger oversight of seafood exporters overseas. "We need to take a fresh look with new eyes at an old problem."
To take such a look, Scripps reporters in March ordered fish meals listed on the menus at the restaurants and sent the fish to two testing facilities: Ft.Lauderdale, Fla.-based Guy Harvey Research Institute at the Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University, and St. Augustine, Fla.-based Fish DNA ID.
Reporters at WFTS in Tampa found restaurants that commonly use a cheaper type of fish after they've run out of what's on the menu. When El Rincon Mexicano Restaurante was out of the "fried fillet of grouper," the eatery simply served catfish. Owner and manager Felix Lugo insisted that servers always tell customers when the kitchen's out of a specific kind of fish.
But WFTS found that in 2008, the restaurant was cited for food product misrepresentation when a Florida state inspector identified 130 pounds of catfish in the freezer that was labeled as grouper.
Among the places you are most likely to receive the wrong fish are sushi houses, according to the Scripps TV investigation. Scripps tested fish billed as red snapper at nine Japanese restaurants -- eight in Kansas City and one in Phoenix. All of them substituted cheaper species, the reporters found. Sushi houses commonly serve Izumidai, a cheap tilapia specially processed to have a red hue so it resembles snapper.
In Tampa, Costa Awes, owner of the Acropolis Greek Tavern, blamed his suppliers for sending him catfish instead of grouper when WFTS reporters found the switch.
"I pay for grouper -- high price grouper -- and I'm expecting to have grouper," Waez said. "If any of those companies send me grouper, and it’s not grouper, how would I know?"
In Phoenix, KNXV tested four restaurants, and found two served fish that did not match what they were called on the menus. When reporters asked the manager of one restaurant, JK Sushi, why it served tilapia instead of the advertised red snapper, the eatery changed its menu the next day. At McGrath’s Fish House in Scottsdale, the advertised Pacific snapper was actually rockfish. McGrath’s didn't return calls for comment.
In Baltimore, seafood restaurants fared better. Of four restaurants tested by WMAR, only one -- Luna Del Sol -- served the wrong species. Owner TonyAssadi said he takes pride in knowing his fish, and apologized for serving Asian catfish instead of the advertised grilled grouper.
