There is a 1in 4 chance that any piece of fish you buy in a restaurant or market isn’t what you think it is. Odds are you are paying good money for cheap fish.

Surveys have discovered people buying fresh tuna that was actually tilapia or eating red snapper that turned out to be perch or cod. Twenty five percent of fish sold has been somehow misrepresented or purposely mislabeled.

Not only is the substitution fraud but for those who are concerned about the ethics of what they eat there is another problem. An example is fish that was sold as Alaskan Halibut was actually Atlantic Halibut. The fish are closely related but the ethical problem is that the Atlantic species is at risk of becoming endangered.

Since 2003 scientists have been developing DNA bar coding techniques to identify species. The University of Guelph in Canada started a project called the Canadian Barcode of Life Network a database which created a global library of over 30 thousand bar codes representing nearly 55 hundred fish species.

It took two New York teenage students to bring the fraudulent exchange of cheap fish for more expensive choices into the public light.

The two girls were at dinner with one of the teen’s father who happened to be a scientist and early pioneer of DNA bar coding. Over a sushi dinner one the students asked her father, “Could you bar code sushi?”

The father replied that it shouldn’t be a problem and that sparked an idea between the two students.

The two teen friends decided to conduct a survey, “We ate a lot of sushi.”

 The father noted that they were qualified survey workers. “It involved shopping and eating, in which they were already fluent,” he said. 

In all they visited 4 restaurants and 10 Manhattan grocery stores, spending 3 hundred dollars. At home they pared away small pieces of the fish, preserved them in alcohol and then sent them off to the University of Guelph for analysis.

Over 96 samples were examined and scientists were alarmed at the high level of fish mislabeling.

Dr. Robert Hanner, Associate Director of the Canadian Barcode of Life in Guelph isn’t sure where the misrepresentation occurs. “My guess is its happening somewhere in the processing and distribution chain,” he said.

“Trying to pass off one fish as another is often called species substitution, but I have another name for it – fraud,” said John Connelly, President of the National Fisheries Institute in Virginia. The Institute has established a hot line for consumers who think they have been victims of a fish bait and switch scheme. (1-866-956-4272)

Can you trust that your fish is fresh or has it been previously frozen?

Robert Clark,  Executive Chef at Vancouver’s C Restaurant, warns about another fish deception. Fish that has been labeled as being fresh when in fact it has been pre-frozen. Mr. Clark cites Chilean sea bass that is billed as being “Jet Fresh.”

“Not one ounce of Chilean sea bass imported into this country is fresh,” he said.

Dr. Hanner in Guelph suggests that the science of DNA coding is growing quickly and the technology is becoming more accessible. “The cost of doing this is coming down,” he says. “What we need to do is get it out of university research labs and into the hands of border inspectors and end consumers.”