For instance, fish listed on menus as "red snapper" often was found to be far cheaper tilapia, while "grouper" was really catfish, the investigation found. Such substitutions can save a restaurant a bundle - while red snapper fillets cost about $5.20 a pound wholesale, tilapia goes for just $2.20 a pound, according to food commodity analysts.
The Scripps reports, based on DNA analyses of the fish, provide more evidence of the pervasiveness of fish fraud in U.S. restaurants. Although similar testing has been done in New Yorkd City and Mobile, Ala,, The Scripps project is the first to look at severarl cities in different parts of the country.
It also is the most extensive look at the incidence of fish mislabeling since a National Marine Fisheries Serivice report found the 37 percent of fish and 13 percent of other seafood, such as shellfish, were mislabeled over a nine-year period ending in 1997.
Spencer Garrett, who leads the fisheries-service laboratory that conducted that study, thinks fish fraud has increased since then. But he doesn't know for sure, because no follow-up study has been done.
The Scripps investigation found:
- The president of an international restaurant chain, Bice Bistro, admitted to swapping catfish for grouper after KSHB tested fish in Bice's Kansas City, Mo., location.
- JK Sushi in Phoenix changed its menus the day after KNXV discovered that the advertised red snapper was actually tilapia.
- The owner of Baltimore restaurant Luna Del Sol apologized after WMAR found that the "grilled grouper" - priced at more than $25 - was in fact Asian catfish.
- When Acropolis Greek Tavern in Tampa, Fla., was caught serving catfish instead of grouper, the eatery's owner told WFTS that the fish suppliers - and not him - were to blame.
Industry experts say fish fraud comes in a variety of forms: substitution and mislabeling at the restaurant level, mis-representation by restaurant suppliers, and fraud by domestic fish importers and foreign exporters.
Los Angeles federal prosecutor Joseph Johns, who broke up a fish-fraud ring last year, said the scope of the problem is huge.
"There's just an unbelievable amount of fraud being perpetrated on the American public," Johns said. "It's high time somebody really [looks] into this."
But government oversight has been scant, Scripps found.
Industry experts say that because the federal government isn't tracking mislabeled fish in restaurants or supermarkets, they have no idea how often it is happening - or how much money it is costing the public. Americans consume about 5 billion pounds of seafood a year.
While federal authorities want to understand the extent of the fraud, they don't have the resources to address it head-on, said Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, a Washington-based trade group that wants closer oversight of fish imports.
In a February report, the Government Accountability Office criticized the Food and Drug Administration, which concentrates on food-safety matters, for giving short shrift to detecting and preventing fish fraud. The GAO investigators urged the FDA to expand its focus to include false labeling and to collaborate with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to root it out.
But the FDA, citing budget constraints, said it is not planning to scrutinize fish for misrepresentation, said agency spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek. "Species substitution isn't our top concern. But we do take it seriously."
Also pleading a shortage of resources, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says it doesn't have the staffing to conduct spot checks on fish imports for labeling accuracy more than every month or two, said Alan Wolf, NOAA assistant special agent in charge for the Northwest regions of the country. The service spends most of its time protecting endangered fish species.
U.S. Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, wants the FDA to ratchet up its checks and is working with other members of the Senate Commerce Committee on legislation to improve seafood labeling, quality assurance and safety.
Garrett, who directs the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, thinkgs fish inspections for veracity should be mandatory. Currently, federal inspectors examine for quality only a third of fish imports under a voluntary program in which large purchasers, such as supermarkets and restaurant chains, pay a fee for the tests, he said.
"We have to tighten our [inspection] program and then demand the same from our exporters," Garrett said. "We need to take a fresh look with new eyes at an old problem."
To take such a look, Scripps reporters in March ordered fish meals listed on the menus at the restaurants and sent the fish to two testing facilities: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Guy Harvey Research Institute at the Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University, and St. Augustine, Fla.-based Fish DNA ID.
After KSHB in Kansas City found that Bice Bistro was selling catfish instead of the advertised grouper at the Kansas City eatery, the restaurant chain's president, Raffaele Ruggeri, admitted that his company regularly changes species without updating its menu.
"We would consider changing the name on our menu to accurately reflect all species of fish being served nationally, but in no way will we change the product as we stand by its quality," Ruggeri said in a statement. His company, Bice Restaurant Holding, owns 40 restaurants around the world.
Lawyers at the Federal Trade Commission are reviewing KSHB's report to see whether Bice's practice amounts to false advertising and will decide whether to launch an investigation, said agency spokeswoman Betsy Lordan. The FTC never has investigated cases of fish fraud but has the authority to do so, she said.
According to the Scripps TV investigation, sushi houses are among the places you are most likely to receive the wrong fish. Scripps tested fish billed as red snapper at nine Japanese restaurants - eight in Kansas City and one in Phoenix. All of them substituted cheaper species, the reporters found. Sushi houses commonly serve Izumidai, a cheap tilapia specialy processed to have a red hue so it resembles snapper.
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