The Seafood Label Problem Most Shoppers Never Notice

When you buy seafood at the grocery store,

the label might say something simple.

Salmon, tuna, cod.

But those labels often hide more information than they reveal.

In many cases, consumers have almost no idea

what species they are actually eating or where it came from.

And that lack of transparency has become a major issue

in global seafood markets.

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So the key question today is,

what information do seafood labels actually provide?

And what information is missing?

That's really the question here.

So seafood labeling rules very widely in the world.

In major markets, labels include only a few pieces

of basic information.

May have like a common market name,

so what you'd know, cod, salmon, tuna, that kind of stuff.

The country of origin,

and whether the seafood was farmed or wild caught.

But in many cases, the labels don't include

the exact scientific species name,

which is really, really important.

We'll talk about that in a second.

The catch location or the fishing area,

the fishing method use and the vessel

or the fleet that it was caught in.

So even just like the registration flag

where this vessel was registered.

Without this information, it becomes difficult

for consumers to understand what they are actually buying.

And the issue becomes even more complicated

because many market names represent

multiple different species.

For example, the label snapper can represent

more than 60 different species worldwide, 60.

The label tuna can refer to several species

with very different population statuses.

The term rockfish includes dozens of species

of the genus sebatis.

Some of these species are abundant.

Others are heavily overfished or under strict management.

But when they're grouped under one simple in the market name,

consumers cannot easily tell the difference.

It's really difficult.

Knowing the scientific species name,

you can actually get what the common names are.

So you'll have one species name, which is like a Latin name.

And once you have that Latin name,

it'll list all the different.

Like if I search up Latin names and chat GPT

or even on Google or Gemini, whatever that might be,

I don't know what we're searching in these days.

If I search a scientific name,

you'll get all the common names that they're common referred to

and you'll see that there are multiple common names.

And that just could mean the different parts

of the world, different countries are found.

They might have like a Spanish name,

they might have an English name.

Even within an English name,

they'll be called different things

or known for different things.

So just having a common name doesn't necessarily mean

that you're eating the species you think you're eating.

But having that scientific name really brings it to that area.

Also, the vessel or fleet that caught the fish,

making sure that you know what country

that vessel or fleet were registered to

is really important because that will tell you

whether that country is known for good fisheries practices

or not so good fisheries practices.

Some countries are known for not regulating

or not managing the illegal, unregulated

and unreported fisheries, so IUU fishing,

which is a big problem when we look at overfishing.

And so some countries have a really bad reputation for that.

Others have a really good reputation.

So a lot of the vessels will register

under the countries that do not have a good reputation for it

because it's easier to get away with IUU fishing.

So that's how it really works.

So what is the science saying?

Researchers studying seafood supply chains

have repeatedly found that the lack of species level labeling

creates major transparency gaps.

A global analysis of seafood labeling and traceability

found that the seafood products often pass

through multiple intermediates.

So including processors, distributors,

and wholesalers before reaching consumers.

In some cases, after the fishers catch the fish,

they give it to somebody, like give it to a company

and they actually don't know where their product is sold.

That's been documented a number of times,

especially there was one place in North Carolina

where it was documented where the fishers

didn't know where it went.

It got handed off a number of different times

and it would end up in New York, or end up in Seattle,

or end up anywhere.

But they had no idea who was buying their fisheries.

That's why a lot of fishers that are local

have gone to local catch shares

where people pay into a program

and they will get certain fish out of that.

They'll get certain amount of fish out of that

depending on how much they pay.

So like if they have a catch share and you pay like $200,

you may get $200 worth of fish.

The fisher knows who it's going to locally

which is really great for the fisher.

And the consumer knows who caught it.

They know their families, they know everything

and it's kind of nice to have that relationship.

It kind of brings it back home.

It kind of brings pride back into the fishers.

I'm not a fisher, but I know fishermen

and fishing communities have a lot of pride in their work

and I'm sure they would want to see it go to people

that they know and that they can know

will enjoy their fish.

So at each step of the supply chain,

information about species identity or catch origin

can be lost or simplified into these broad categories.

So another study examined seafood labeling

in North America and found that

market names frequently grouped multiple species together

making it difficult for buyers to know exactly

where they were purchasing.

This is not necessarily illegal.

In many cases, it is simply how seafood regulations

were designated decades ago.

But the result is a marketplace

where species level transparency is often missing.

A solution to that is to update these regulations,

update the marketplace, making sure that transparency

is for thinking in the policy, in the regulations, in the law.

So why does this matter?

Why do we care from a consumer's point of view,

from my point of view, like why am I telling you

why labeling is important and the lack

of information labeling is not a good thing?

When seafood is sold under broad market names

instead of specific species, several problems emerge.

First, it becomes harder to detect seafood fraud.

If you have the transparency and know the species,

you know where it's gone, throughout the entire supply chain,

it's really hard to sell fraudulent seafood

or even pass on fraudulent seafood.

Second, fisheries managers have more difficulty tracking,

which species are actually being sold and consumed.

And third, consumers who want to make sustainable seafood choices

often do not have the information they need.

A great example is anytime I go to the supermarket

and I ask the person behind the counter

and usually it's like, you know, something like a teenager

or someone who's just trying to get their job,

trying to get their pay, whether it's minimum wage

as a student or a student wage

or somebody else has been there forever.

If they don't know much about the fish,

they don't know where it came from, how it was caught,

where it was caught, it makes the process really difficult.

And to be honest, it shouldn't be up

to the person behind the counter.

It should be up to the labels that are on the actual packaging.

So for example, two fish labeled as tuna

may come from completely different fisheries

and completely different geographies

with very different environmental impacts.

But the label does not always reveal the difference.

This lack of transparency creates blind spots

across the entire seafood supply chain.

Tomorrow, we're gonna look at how scientists discovered

the seafood labels are sometimes not just vague.

They're just sometimes wrong.

DNA testing has revealed widespread seafood mislabeling

in markets around the world.

We're gonna really dive deep into fraud.

And the results, it may surprise you.

But if you like this information

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And if you know someone who may benefit from this,

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or someone who loves seafood

and they wanna have more sustainable choices

or better pick the choices,

send this to them right now.

That's how we get this community larger.

That's how we get more people talking about the ocean

because this is the beginning of a conversation.

I would love for you to continue it.

You can give me feedback

or you can have questions, comments or anything like that.

If you go to speakupforblue.com,

forward slash feedback.

That's speakupforblue.com, forward slash feedback.

The link is in the show notes.

If you wanna just click on that.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this.

I would love to hear your experiences

when you buy seafood and do you find it confusing?

Do you look for labels, all that kind of stuff.

Love to hear your thought.

But until next time, I wanna thank you

for joining me on today's episode

of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

I am your host, Andrew Lewin.

Have a great day.

We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.