VANCOUVER—A quarter of the seafood sold across Metro Vancouver — from your local grocery store to your sushi restaurant — is not what you think you’re buying, according to a new study.

Roughly 90 per cent of snapper was tilapia, while sutchi catfish masqueraded as halibut, snapper, sole and cod.

That’s because the supply chain for seafood is both “complex” and “opaque,” said Yaxi Hu, lead author and food science PhD candidate at University of British Columbia.

Researchers used DNA bar coding testing to test 281 samples of fish sold and determined a quarter were another species altogether. Restaurants scored the highest in terms of mislabelling at 29 per cent, then grocery stores at 24 per cent and sushi bars at 22 per cent.

But there was evidence of both intentional and unintentional mislabelling. For instance, fish sold as snapper were far less valued species such as tilapia. Meanwhile, in other cases, sockeye was substituted as pink salmon where economic motivation was less likely, Hu explained.

Much of the confusion lies in vernacular, she added. For example, Canada only requires seafood labels to be generic names, which can include multi-species, Hu said, pointing to pacific snapper or rockfish being used interchangeably.

Analysis was done in partnership with independent charity Oceana Canada, the Hanner Lab at the University of Guelph and the University of B.C.’s Lu Food Safety & Health Engineering Lab, with the aim of understanding how far fraudulent labelling goes in the seafood supply chain.

“Though consumers are very aware of sustainable methods, they cannot make informed decisions,” Hu said.

A fish can be caught in Canada, gutted in China, and then breaded in the United States, ultimately sold back to Canada.

But that product would be labelled American, based on current Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations, which label a fish based on the country of last processing. Misidentification can happen anywhere along the way, and it’s incredibly difficult to identify where, Hu said.

Food fraud is the intentional mislabelling for economic gain and the problem is estimated to cost the world $52 billion.

“Seafood fraud can cause national and international problems, such as economic damage to consumers and irresponsible fishery industries,” Hu said. “It can also diminish consumer trust over governmental agencies.”

In addition, seafood fraud creates legal markets for illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, as well as cause potential health damages to susceptible populations, such as pregnant women, she added.

Robert Hanner, chief technology officer at TRU-ID — a Guelph-based company that provides DNA certification of foods — told StarMetro Canada, as one of the top seafood-producing countries in the world, complies with much more stringent labelling when exporting products to the European Union.

That’s because the EU requires the scientific species name, country of origin and packaging.

“Canadian consumers don’t benefit from this same level of transparency at home,” Hanner said. “This situation compromises consumer choice and even facilities laundering illegally harvested seafood into the domestic market, at the expense of legitimate suppliers.”

The problem is not new: Groups such as Oceana have been calling for legislative changes to allow for more transparency for decades.

“Seafood fraud cheats Canadian consumers and hurts local, honest fishers as well as chefs and seafood companies looking to buy sustainable seafood,” said Julia Levin, seafood fraud campaigner with Oceana Canada. “It causes health concerns and masks global human rights abuses by creating a market for illegally caught fish.”

That’s why the key to fighting seafood fraud is boat-to-plate traceability, she added. This means tracking seafood all the way through the supply chain and requiring that key information travels along with the product.

Authors supported several measures to help consumers understand what they’re buying including: harmonizing the common names of fish between major trading countries; requiring scientific names on labels; and providing consumers with information about where the fish was caught, processed and methods used.

But the situation is not getting any better. Eight years ago, an Oceana study found the mislabelling rate to be roughly 33 per cent, while testing last fall in Ottawa revealed nearly half of all samples to be mislabelled.

Oceana plans to release a national seafood fraud report this fall with findings from Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria.

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Meanwhile, the United Nations issued a report this year calling for harmonized DNA-based system that provides universal access to a standard database using scientific names.

And the UBC Lu Lab is developing a portable device that will allow consumers to test fish at their convenience.

The study was published on Monday in Food Control and the research is supported by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.

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