NYCFish (“Sushigate”): high school students discover one-quarter of fish sold in their NYC neighborhood is mislabeled

News report by students Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss

Dubbed “Sushi-gate”, their investigation drew wide and continuing interest

Mislabelings were as more expensive or more desirable fish

For example: 

Student study helped spawn further investigations

• The Boston Globe, October 23, 2011
• Hanner R et al 2011 Mitochondrial DNA
• Consumer Reports, December 2011
• Oceana Report, June 2012

In October 2011, US FDA officially adopted DNA barcoding for detection of seafood fraud

https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/Seafood/DNAspeciation/default.htm

More on “Sushi-gate”

Among 60 items tested:

• Nile Perch (Africa), Lavender Jobfish (SE Asia), Slender Pinjalo (SE Asia), and Acadian Redfish (N Atlantic) sold as “Red Snapper“
• Mozambique Tilapia sold as “White Tuna”
• Smelt Roe sold as “Flying Fish Roe”
• Caribbean Spotted Goatfish sold as “Mediterranean Red Mullet”
• White Bass (farmed freshwater fish) sold as “Sea Bass”

Mislabeled items sold in 6 of 10 grocery stores/fish markets and 2 of 3 restaurants

In a NY Times sequel story, chefs claimed supreme expertise, followed by a Op-Ed “Fish or Foul” highlighting fallible judgment of experts.

Research article reporting NYCFish findings: Wong EHK, Hanner RH, 2008, DNA barcoding detects market substitution in North American seafood. Food Res International 41:828-837.

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About the Bar Code of Life site
This web site is an outgrowth of the Taxonomy, DNA, and Barcode of Life meeting held at Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, September 9-12, 2003. It is managed by Mark Stoeckle at the Program for the Human Environment (PHE) at The Rockefeller University.

Contact: mark.stoeckle@rockefeller.edu

About the Program for the Human Environment
The involvement of the Program for the Human Environment in DNA barcoding dates to Jesse Ausubel's attendance in February 2002 at a conference in Nova Scotia organized by the Canadian Center for Marine Biodiversity. At the conference, Paul Hebert presented for the first time his concept of large-scale DNA barcoding for species identification. Impressed by the potential for this technology to address difficult challenges in the Census of Marine Life, Jesse agreed with Paul on encouraging a conference to explore the contribution taxonomy and DNA could make to the Census as well as other large-scale terrestrial efforts. In his capacity as a Program Director of the Sloan Foundation, Jesse turned to the Banbury Conference Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, whose leader Jan Witkowski prepared a strong proposal to explore both the scientific reliability of barcoding and the processes that might bring it to broad application. Concurrently, PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle began to work with the Hebert lab on analytic studies of barcoding in birds. Our involvement in barcoding now takes 3 forms: assisting the organizational development of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life and the Barcode of Life Initiative; contributing to the scientific development of the field, especially by studies in birds, and contributing to public understanding of the science and technology of barcoding and its applications through improved visualization techniques and preparation of brochures and other broadly accessible means, including this website. While the Sloan Foundation continues to support CBOL through a grant to the Smithsonian Institution, it does not provide financial support for barcoding research itself or support to the PHE for its research in this field.