By Peter Rudegeair
NEW YORK |
Tue Dec 11, 2012 12:22am EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nearly 3 in 5 New York City grocery stores and restaurants that sell seafood have mislabeled partial of their stock, substituting varieties that could means health problems, according to a new study.
Some 39 percent of a fish performed for a investigate by a sea charge organisation Oceana was inaccurately identified, Oceana said. Sometimes inexpensive fish is replaced for some-more costly varieties or abundant class for wanting ones.
Forensic DNA research suggested 58 percent of 81 New York retailers and eateries sampled wrongly labeled a seafood they sold, according to a investigate expelled Tuesday.
“It’s unsuitable that New York seafood lovers are being hoodwinked some-more than one-third of a time when purchasing certain forms of fish,” Kimberly Warner, a comparison scientist during Oceana and an author of a study, pronounced in a news release.
In some instances, consumers unknowingly purchased fish that could poise health risks.
Blueline tilefish masqueraded as halibut and red snapper. The FDA urges profound women, nursing mothers and tiny children to equivocate tilefish given a high mercury content.
All though one of a 17 white tuna samples performed from sushi restaurants incited out to be escolar, a fish whose diarrhea-inducing properties warranted it a nickname a “ex-lax fish.”
Mislabeled seafood can benefaction a open health regard since many hazards are class specific, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mouthpiece pronounced in an email. Allergic reactions and food-borne illnesses are some of a probable health hazards, a mouthpiece said.
New York’s rate of seafood mislabeling was aloft than Miami’s (31 percent) though reduce than that of Boston (48 percent) and Los Angeles (55 percent), according to new Oceana investigations.
What distinguishes New York’s seafood marketplace from those of a other American cities Oceana tested is a participation of smaller, eccentric food stores, 40 percent of that sole mislabeled fish, Warner pronounced in an interview. In contrast, usually 12 percent of seafood bought during inhabitant sequence grocery stores in New York were labeled incorrectly.
The problem is not new. A investigate appearing in a 1992 emanate of Consumer Reports found about a third of a seafood sampled in New York, Chicago, and San Jose was wrongly labeled.
Nor is seafood mislabeling an emanate that has left unreported. The find in Aug 2011 that Zabar’s, a epicurean food store on Manhattan, had been flitting off crawfish as lobster in a lobster salad for during slightest 15 years was a theme of multiple, high-profile media stories.
(Additional stating by Sharon Begley; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)