Consequences of seafood mislabeling for marine populations and fisheries management

Abstract

Over the past decade, seafood mislabeling has been increasingly documented, raising public concern over the identity, safety, and sustainability of seafood. Negative outcomes from seafood mislabeling are suspected to be substantial and pervasive as seafood is the world's most highly traded food commodity. Here we provide empirical systems-level evidence that enabling conditions exist for seafood mislabeling in the United States (US) to lead to negative impacts on marine populations and support consumption of products from poorly managed fisheries. Using trade, production, and mislabeling data, we determine that substituted products are more likely to be imported than the product listed on the label. We also estimate that about 60% of US mislabeled apparent consumption associated with the established pairs involves products that are exclusively wild caught. We use these wild-caught pairs to explore population and management consequences of mislabeling. We find that, compared to the product on the label, substituted products come from fisheries with less healthy stocks and greater impacts of fishing on other species. Additionally, substituted products are from fisheries with less effective management and with management policies less likely to mitigate impacts of fishing on habitats and ecosystems compared with the label product. While we provide systematic evidence of environmental impacts from food fraud, our results also highlight the current challenges with production, trade, and mislabeling data, which increase the uncertainty surrounding seafood mislabeling consequences. More integrated, holistic, and collaborative approaches are needed to understand mislabeling impacts and design interventions to minimize mislabeling.

Keywords: food fraud; seafood mislabeling; seafood trade; species substitution.

Fig. 1.

Mislabeling and apparent consumption for the US seafood supply. (A) Estimated mislabeling rates and mislabeled apparent consumption for pairs of seafood products where the expected product has been tested for mislabeling in the United States. The horizontal axis is the mode mislabeling rate for each pair, while the vertical axis is the resulting apparent mislabeled consumption. Products with high rates have low consumption and vice versa. The majority of pairs have relatively low rates and low consumption. Pairs with high mislabeled apparent consumption are labeled to show the expected and substitute products (expected $\to$ substitute). Colored points represent pairs that contribute to the substitute products that have the highest total mislabeled consumption in B. (B) Of the substitute products that have been identified in the United States, the top 10 make up 55% of the total estimated mislabeled consumption. The total mislabeled consumption for each substitute product is calculated by grouping the pairs by substitute product and summing the mislabeled apparent consumption. The expected products Pacific salmon*, Cod*, and Tuna* represent more than one species. Common names follow Fishbase (18) and Sealifebase (19).

Fig. 2.

The estimated countries of origin of substitute products involved in seafood mislabeling occurring in the United States. Countries where the origin of substitute products represents >1% of US mislabeled apparent consumption are shaded blue. The products listed represent the most common substitute by volume for each country. Substitute products from the United States and Canada are responsible for about half of the estimated mislabeled consumption. Common names follow Fishbase (18) and Sealifebase (19).

Fig. 3.

Estimated production method and population and management performance of seafood products involved in mislabeling. Approximately 40% of estimated mislabeled apparent consumption involves seafood products that can be produced via aquaculture (i.e., >1% of the expected or substitute product is farmed). The remaining about 60% of consumption involves exclusively wild-caught seafood products. For pairs exclusively involving wild-caught products, we compare the 95% confidence interval of the bootstrapped distribution under the null hypothesis that there is no difference between substitute products’ Seafood Watch scores and their corresponding expected product scores. Across all four scores, substitute product scores are consistently worse than expected product scores ($P\le 0.04$). See Materials and Methods for information on the statistical tests.