Seafood mislabelling
The Jewish dietary laws, known as kashrut, required the Jews to identify certain types of fish to maintain a kosher diet.
[9] While the Lacey Act was directed toward conservation efforts, the law also created a de facto labeling requirement for certain types of products, such as fish.
Although the 1938 Act provides the structural framework for labeling laws in the United States, statutory updates and additions have been made.
The FDA explains the history of how this list evolved: Through the years, the Federal Government has worked to provide consistent and scientifically sound recommendations to industry and consumers about acceptable market names for seafood sold in interstate commerce.
This advice was consolidated in 1988 when The Fish List was first published by FDA in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service to provide a source of names that would facilitate consistency and order in the U.S. market place and reduce confusion among consumers.
As late as 2010, the US General Accounting Office reported, "Public databases seldom use validated fish standards and thus are likely to contain incomplete and/or inaccurate DNA sequences.
explain the reason U.S. Government believes "validated fish standards" are important: Linking DNA sequences to specimens in museum collections is therefore critical for the success of barcoding.
The deposition of voucher specimens will ensure that all results entered into GenBank or a similar database can be checked and corrected.
Voucher specimens are not a requirement by GenBank today, which is a known problem as errors are frequently discovered in the submissions without any possibility of checking the original material.
The FDA states, "Once completed, the FISH-BOL database will enable a fast, accurate, and cost-effective system for molecular identification of the world's icthyofauna.
"[26] Thus, because Genbank and Fish Barcode of Life databases do not exclusively include only taxonomically validated references, they cannot be relied on for regulatory compliance testing in the US.
However, the Greenpeace study was conducted based on EU labeling rules and would likely have produced a lower mislabeling rate under US law.
They failed to find any strong evidence for a widespread mislabeling for profit driver for seafood; rather, Δmislabel was highly variable.
Some species, such a sturgeon caviar, Atlantic Salmon, and Yellowfin Tuna had a positive Δmislabel, and may have the sufficient characteristics to motivate mislabeling for profit.
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna and Patagonian Toothfish had a negative Δmislabel, which could represent an incentive to mislabel in order to facilitate market access for illegally-landed seafood.
The FDA details what types of product descriptions are acceptable[14] in the U.S. and provides a list of what species of fish can be sold under certain market names in the US.
For instance, Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides), also known in the U.S. as Chilean sea bass, may be labeled as Merluza negra in Argentina and Uruguay, Bacalao in Chile, Mero in Japan, Légine australe in France, Marlonga-negra in Portugal, and Tandnoting in Sweden.
The largest Federal investigation related to economic fraud resulting from seafood mislabeling came after import alert 16-128 was issued.
Although not affecting all people, the wax esters are indigestible in humans and to those susceptible can cause constipation, followed by severe oily diarrhea (keriorrhoea), rapid loose bowel movements, with onset 30 minutes to 36 hours after consumption.
Scombroid food poisoning is syndrome resembling an allergic reaction that occurs within a few hours of eating fish contaminated with scombrotoxin.
[81] When people eat the types of fish that are high in methylmercury, it can accumulate in the blood stream over time and may take over a year for the levels to drop significantly.
[84] The greatest risk from fish allergies is anaphylaxis, which can cause life-threatening breathing, cardiac, and gastrointestinal symptoms.
Antibiotics are chemicals designed to either kill or inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria while exploiting the differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes in order to make them relatively harmless in higher-level organisms.
[89] For this reason, the overuse of antibiotics in treatment of fish aquaculture (among other agricultural uses) could create public health issues.
[91] In order to prevent the spread of bacteria and disease in contaminated water, some foreign fish farms put U.S.-banned antibiotics into their fishmeal.
[97] The Import Alert provides that the use of antimicrobials during the various stages of aquaculture, including malachite green, nitrofurans, fluoroquinolones, and gentian violet, may contribute to an increase of antimicrobial resistance in human pathogens and that prolonged exposure to nitrofurans, malachite green, and gentian violet has been shown to have a carcinogenic affect.
[97] In a consumer brochure, the FDA describes the reasoning for enforcement under the import alert: After FDA repeatedly found that farm-raised seafood from China was contaminated, the agency announced on June 28, 2007, a broader import control of all farm-raised catfish, basa, shrimp, dace(related to carp), and eel from China.
During targeted sampling, from October 2006 through May 2007, FDA repeatedly found that farm-raised seafood from China was contaminated with antimicrobial agents that are not approved for use in the United States.
[101] In response to the US discovery of chloramphenicol in imported shrimp and subsequent increased testing sensitivity, the use of this compound in aquaculture began to decrease.
[105] Fluoroquinolones have been prohibited from extra-label use in the U.S. and many other parts of the world in aquaculture because of public health concern about the development of such antimicrobial resistance.
