FDA to use DNA in fight against "fish switching"

[By BEN RAINES, Staff Reporter]

The fishermen competing in the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo are helping to catch crooked fishmongers who engage in fish substitution — passing off low-value fish, something like a croaker, for a premium species, such as red snapper.

Such switches are fairly common, according to FDA officials, because the skinless, boneless filets of many fish appear nearly identical to most people.

A study published in the science journal Nature found that 77 percent of fish sold as red snapper in seafood shops were actually another species.

"We've got two reasons for doing this," said Jon Deeds, a biologist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "One is the substitution issue, where people are taking a lower-value fish and selling it as a higher-value fish.

The other issue is food safety."

FDA scientists will be on hand at the rodeo collecting samples of the different species caught. DNA from those samples will be used to create a genetic fingerprint — literally a DNA bar code — for each species.

Those barcodes can then be compared against the DNA found in any suspect fish served or sold anywhere in the nation.
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