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DNA Bar Coding Finds Mislabeled Sushi
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project to check 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique called DNA Bar Coding to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting, and found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled: A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt." (More below.)
"Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species. The project began over dinner with Stoeckle's father, a scientist and early proponent of the use of DNA bar codings. Instead of sequencing the entire genome, bar coders examine a single gene. Dr. Stoeckle said he was excited to see the technology used in a new way and compared the technique to GPS. 'The smaller and cheaper you make something,' he said, 'the more uses it has.'"
What are you going to do? Please, don't waste your research and not.. report these! I want a certified sushi organization. There's money to be made!
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
...can you check the DNA in that? I hope it's not anyone I know.
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
I wish I knew which sushi restaurants to avoid, it appears to be most of them.
"Acadian redfish, an endangered species." Right now Animal Activist Are break down the scientist's door asking them what restaurant the fish was found in.
It'll be interesting to see whether the sushi shops or fish vendors mislabel on purpose. There's powerful incentive to misidentify if you can get away with it - substitute some cheap fish for premium ones, like the premium tuna example in the article. Also interesting that the students found endangered fish samples as well...
I hope it's not anyone I know.
Reminds me of the Pearls Before Swine comic strip where Pig says that "BLTs taste so ... good."
come to think of it, I haven't seen the taco bell chihuahua in a while...
Is anyone really surprised that a business is selling cheaper fish off as a more expensive one.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
Ever see the early South Park DVDs with the special features called "Makin' Bacon with Macon?" Matt and Trey put on a cooking show with their mascot, Macon the pig. They make all kinds of bacony treats, and feed the leftover bacon to the pig.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Doesn't cooking destroy DNA?
You just exposed one of their most profitable scams.
Doesn't cooking destroy DNA?
This article is about sushi. He's eating his burrito raw.
Confucius say "Man who check fish too closely never get bone in freelay."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"'The smaller and cheaper you make something,' he said, 'the more uses it has'"
Condoms are cheap.
Give me a break. If you can't tell masago (smelt roe) from tobiko (flying fish roe) then you have simply never seen the two. You don't need a DNA scanner to tell the difference because masago is dull and solid, tobiko is jewel-like and transluscent.
This was also covered in an article in the Toronto Star.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Again, if the restaurants substituted food, they are being dishonest and should face whatever legal consequences occur. OTOH, sometimes we humans are willfully gullible just so we can enjoy the experience of eating without having to pay for it. We drink fruit drinks with almost no fruit, eat beef burritos with almost no beef, and heart healthy omelets with almost no eggs. Life, in many cases, is a fiction, and the only issue are those that believe it. Although the tech is cool, we are not going to reduce our meals to a science experiment.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Kuni: Okay, Weaver, listen carefully. You can hold on to your red snapper...
Kuni: ...or you can go for what's in the box that Hiro-San is bringing down the aisle right now! What's it gonna be?
Phyllis Weaver: I'll take the box. The box!
Kuni: You took the box? Let's see what's in the box!
Kuni: Nothing! Absolutely nothing! STUPID! You're so STU-PIIIIIIIIIIID!
Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt.
Of course, the roe from flying fish are from smelt; they're the ones that are being dive-bombed!
Seven of nine samples...
Leave it to the Slashdot crowd to put a Star Trek reference in a story about seafood.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Haven't you noticed the absence of your neighbors pet, Fluffy, lately?
I thought sushi was rice, not fish?
In holland a newspaper called AD has a feature where they test fries, patat.
The ones that win proudly display the article and do massive business because of it. With so many bad fast food places being tested as being the best is an excellent piece of advertising.
If you were going to buy fish/sushi and you just read this article, where would you go?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
FTA: Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt.
Cheaper sushi bars do this all the time, and you don't need DNA sequencing to spot the difference. Tobiko (flying fish roe) eggs are larger than smelt eggs, and they're a clear orange color.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The people responsible should be held accountable.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Steve Palumbi did this back in the mid-90's for whale and dolphin products being sold in commercial markets in Korea and Japan (Baker and Palumbi 1994 Science 265: 1538; Baker et al. 1995 Molecular Ecology 5:671). Essentially they went around the fish stalls taking samples and amplifying and sequencing them in their hotel room. From the latter article abstract:
This 'spot check' revealed a surprising variety of species for sale, including minke, fin and humpback whales and one or two species of dolphins sold as 'kujira' or whale. In the Korean survey, DNA amplifications were conducted by two of us (C.S.B. and F.C.) working with independent equipment and reagents. The two sets of DNA amplifications were returned to our respective laboratories and sequenced independently for cross-validation. Among the total of 17 species-specific sequences we found a dolphin, a beaked whale, 13 Northern Hemisphere minke whales (representing at least seven distinct individuals) and two whales which are closely related to the recognized sei and Bryde's whales but could not be identified as either using available type sequences. We suggest that these two specimens represent a currently unrecognized species or subspecies of Bryde's whale, possibly the so-called 'small-form' reported from the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific.
Until these guys went out and actually did the sequencing, no one knew for sure how much illegal whaling activity was going on.
In Japanese cuisine, sushi is vinegared rice, usually topped with other ingredients, including fish, various meats, and vegetables.
Outside of Japan, sushi is sometimes misunderstood to mean the raw fish itself, or even any fresh raw-seafood dishes.
In Japan, sliced raw fish alone is called sashimi and is distinct from sushi, as sashimi is the raw fish component, not the rice component.
The word sushi itself comes from an archaic grammatical form of a word that is no longer used in other contexts; literally, sushi means "it's sour".
The Free Market will fix it. The Free Market fixes everything!
Don't worry, your beef burrito contains 0% mammal tissue.
Technically, raw fish is "sashimi", but is often combined with rice and seaweed and other ingredients to make sushi. Not all sushi contains sashimi, but most does. I don't think rice by itself counts as sushi.
i am allergic to all fish species except salmon (dont ask me how), so having sushi is a dangerous choice.
seeing that i tell the waiter and only order vegetable and salmon rolls, if the fish is mislabeled, i could be dead.
this is something that needs to be done!
Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled...
The borg do not make mistakes. You will be assimilated. DNA Recoding is futile.
I want to do some sort of pun on Roe v. something but I can't think of anything fishy that rhymes with Wade.
Eh, the best one was from Katrina.
"What does Bush think about Roe vs. Wade?"
"He doesn't care how they get out of New Orleans."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
That's good I prefer chicken anyway.
Since this relies on segments of mitochondrial DNA(not the nucleus's DNA), it fails in species with endosymbiotic bacteria, such as many arthropods and the Wolbachia bacteria. So it's unlikely this will work on, say, crab or lobster.
Wolbachia is an awesome bacteria, as it can cause those infected with it to be unable to breed with those not infected, which could possibly induce the divergence of species. Some species have been infected with it so long, generationally, that they go sterile if you give them antibiotics.
Rats are mammals, right?
Oh don't worry: If it's from Taco Bell, it doesn't have any organic matter in there anyway.
I am officially gone from
Now they're performing deep packet inspection on our sushi. If we eat the wrong kind of fish, do we get throttled?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
He's right, you know. "Make a profit any way you can." It's as American as Mom's Fake Apple Pie!
you had me at #!
Anonymous Coward does that all the time. I'm sure he's on BOTH their hit lists by now. If they ever find him, things are going to be pretty boring around here.
you had me at #!
n/t
That said, the hypocrites probably own plenty of contraceptive industries.
you had me at #!
"If you were going to buy fish/sushi and you just read this article, where would you go?"
Uhmm...fishing?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
You thought correctly. Sushi can be served with fish, or with other things; and the fish or other things can be cooked or raw.
Raw fish is a popular form of sushi, so the mistake can be excused as synecdoche.
In a state well-known for its walleye, a local television station ran an investigative report a couple of years ago on restaurants that proclaimed to serve walleye in various forms...and found a number of them trying to pass off zander as walleye (usually by trying to call it "European walleye"). A number of them were shamed into switching to the genuine article.
Mad pig disease HERE WE COME! xD;
*runs like hell*
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
This is a common practice in the food industry. While there might be a few cases of people really not realize what they've bought for their consumers is the wrong stuff, by far and large, especially in the restaurant biz, they know it's not what they've claimed it to be.
Why do this do this? Profits of course! Charge $18 for a mahi meal and serve them cod or tilapia instead. The average persons taste buds aren't refined enough to know the difference.
I've been kindly asked to leave sushi places before when my "fresh super white tuna from Korea" tasted a lot like farm raised cod, which I rudely pointed out when the waitress asked me if "everything was ok". At least I got a somewhat free meal out of it!
And now that I think about it, all of the Sushi places I've been too, there's only been one or two places that actually served what they advertised. Hands down, best tasting sushi I will ever have.
Ultimately, I don't think this will change anything on the restaurant side. Grocery store side? Maybe. When you can make large profits from misrepresenting what you're selling and get away with it, the barcoding won't stop it. All it will do is help the honest business stay honest.
Don't worry, your McNugget contains 0% avian tissue.
I want one of these devices, packaged with neat software... this way when I go to buy sushi at my local retailer, and I pay 10 bucks for a lobster roll, and get zero lobster, I can sue the living fish out them.
There was always something fishy about those sushi restaurants!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Mad pig disease HERE WE COME!
Isn't that another name for PMS? Or is Mad Cow Disease the only alternate name for that time of the month?
This space unintentionally left blank.
So theyll sell pikeperch which tastes almost exactly the same but costs a lot less. Its illegal to mislabel to do so but hard to enforce
Omnivores/carnivores don't seem to have as much trouble with cannibalism and prion diseases as herbivores do.
That doesn't really fit with human prion issues (but perhaps human cannibalism just concentrates prions from other sources).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Whales are bottom feeders, the cockroaches of the sea. They want to be slaughtered by us, why else do you think they beach themselves? Harpoon them all I say.
I own part of a restaurant on the coast as well. The major vendors like Sysco will tell you exactly what you're getting - falsely advertising grouper can carry some hefty fines if they come by and check up on it. Any restaurants that claim they are being duped are lying or simply dumb. You know what you're getting when you pay the bill, if price is too good to be true...
(Here's a helpful tip from a restaurateur: DON'T OPEN A FUCKING RESTAURANT. Really.)
.. albacore I had last night turned out to be seared liver.... ewww
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It's the internet; fair game.
Mad pig disease HERE WE COME!
Isn't that another name for PMS?
If and ONLY if she's in uniform. Plainclothes don't count.
*ducks*
This is the sort of fraud, the prevention of which could really spur the development of remote DNA testing. Imagine how hand that would be!
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
I think the response would be much like the John Candy SCTV sketch on the subject.
No one did indignant rage like John Candy!
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Doesn't cooking destroy DNA?
It's certainly harder to do this sort of stuff on cooked samples, but it's not impossible.
Sort of the pretentious "gourmet" meets audiophiles in the monster cable aisle. Just charge 'em enough, they will believe what they are getting is quality and never notice the difference. I think they have done similar tests with those wine..whiners, slap table wine into expensive labeled bottles, "ohh, it has an earthy nose with a hint of wild woodland moss and..." yada yada nonsense. Or modern art done by chimpanzees.
Ya, what the bogus fish sellers are doing is wrong, it is still funny as heck though, c'mon, admit it!
People make fun of us southerners and good old boys, but we know the difference between a pork chop, some fried chicken, some bass and then that "sushi" which is dollars a bite stuff we would call *bait* stuck in a ball with some cheap white rice and seaweed washed up on the beach.
And we use used recycled lampcord from busted appliances for speaker wire. Works perfectly fine.
Yes!
Compared to say... Q-Tips... meeh.. not as much.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Of the 40 or so whale species, gray's are the only bottom feeders afaik. But you don't sound like you really care about facts anyway.
How about performing the test before cooking while its still raw?
it doesn't have any organic matter in there anyway
Excrement is still organic matter. Things like Cyanide naturally occur in plant seeds and such as well.
Give them a break, there might be SOME organic matter in there somewhere.
oh...right.. =)
Ice Cream has no bones.
The world outside of Japan is perfectly correct to call the raw fish itself "sushi." It's an English word borrowed from Japanese and used to denote either raw fish or raw fish and rice. Apparently in Japanese it means something else, but we don't have to be slaves to the Japanese meaning anymore than they have to be to the foreign words they adopt.
Nothing like misrepresenting free-market capitalism. Goober.
I'm not popular enough to be different.
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
I work as a fish wholesaler. We deal mostly with restaurants but we do a few retail establishments too.
The fish business is surprisingly crooked. With the Russian mafia controlling the caviar trade and various fly by night operations selling foul product that has been color treated to look new.Having a competent chef is vary important when dealing with fish quality. Labeling is a constant problem in the fishing industry even with the COOL act. Domestic red snapper is the worst of the lot when it comes to company's labeling poorly. Mainly because on a wholesale level the fish sells for 13.95-14.95 per pound fillet (regional price only), while tilapia is often sold at 6.95-7.95 per pound fillet. Other things that get sold as red snapper is red rock, corvina, lane snapper, ling snapper. (although ling is often not cheaper) It is so bad that the USDC stepped in and only 1 genus of fish can be sold as red snapper, 2 in California. The trick to buying red snapper is to only buy it skin on, preferably whole. If it is skin off fillet pass because it's almost impossible to identify then. Selling tilapia as tuna is retarded those two fish do not even taste similar although if the fish is drenched in soy sauce and wasabi it is difficult to tell even the widest of gaps in fish taste.
Also since this is going to come up at one point. Scallops that are marked sea scallops or processed scallops ARE NOT skate or shark. These scallops are treated with tripolyphosphate so they soak up water. Dry pack scallops are not treated so they are a better quality scallop. It is very difficult to cut skate in such a way on an industrial level to make it look like a scallop especially when the yield from it would cut into profit and most chefs can tell the difference.
And while I'm at it:
Amberjack is not mahi
Ahi meens tuna or yellowfin tuna. Saying ahi tuna is silly
Ono and wahoo are the same god damn fish just buy the cheaper wahoo
Langostino is from a squat lobster which isn't really a lobster but it still tastes good.
someone wrote an excellent book about fish market fraud and this has become a favorite for network news investigations. these girls don't deserve to be in the new york times. they are stealing valuable page-real-estate from obama.
If eating the cheap stuff is roughly as enjoyable as eating the fancy, expensive fish, why are we wasting money and contributing to the overfishing of rare species when common, cheaper fish can provide a similar experience at a lesser environmental cost?
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
On the one hand, while allowing false advertising and fraud is a bad thing in the vast majority of circumstances, this isn't really that bad. Someone who can tell the difference will ask for their money back, and get it. Someone who can't will enjoy their sushi that they bought because it was expensive... and enjoy it because it was expensive. It's not like they are serving contaminated fish or something. It's probably cheaper because it's less rare, so this practice probably helps protect against overfishing.
Actually, this work was based on a really cool research project - to catalog all the species on the planet via a short, standardized region of their DNA.
There's an online database, and much of the data is publicly available. (follow the "Published Projects" link to log in anonymously).
They also provide a taxonomy browser which is a bit more fun to play with (there are pictures).
Fish in fish markets is but the tip of the iceberg: customs officials can use this to halt the import/export of endangered and/or invasive species, it can lead to the discovery of new species, and help us to quantify biodiversity on the planet (and how quickly we're fscking it away)....
--jjj
Controls most Sushi-grade fish distribution in the US.
See: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0604sushi-1-story,0,3736876.story
So, what else to expect from the new Messiah? Tilapia to Maguro = PROFIT!
Funny thing - Maguro and Tilapia have very different textures, flavors and colors. I could (remotely) buy a novice eating Tilapia instead of Albacore - but, once again the textures and taste are vastly different.
"Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species."
OK, first:
- No one said there'd be "Seven of Nine" Samples. Jeri Ryan would want to know this. (Well, it did SAY sushi...)
- Red Snapper: I'm leaving that alone.
Can you see how distracting this kinda labeling can be? :>
Ask anyone with a penchant for sea food; "Crab meat" rarely is. And "Sardines"? They're a category of fish, not a species. Just passing the word.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
If you need a DNA test to tell you the difference between cheap sashimi and expensive sashimi, perhaps you're better off ordering the cheap stuff in the first place. Adam
Correct but often misunderstood. I'm just a little amazed that an article can make these mistakes? And I love sashimi except not so much the less common, but not unusual, sashimi with vegetarian ingredients items such as yuba (bean curd skin) or raw red meats, such as beef or horse.
And the anti-whaling people say that all this whaling by japanese and koreans isn't really for the purported "scientific research". But look! These guys found a new species!
Sushi and sashimi are meant to highlight the natural taste and texture of extremely fresh ingredients. For many kinds of sushi toppings, this means that they're served completely raw and unadorned, but not for all. Many sushi toppings are very lightly cooked (e.g., by brief boiling or steaming); some items also are served with a sauce that improves their flavor; others may be raw but marinated.
The association of "sushi" with "raw fish" outside of Japan is because non-Japanese find the idea of eating raw fish a bit shocking, but really, the best explanation of sushi is extremely fresh seafood, with the bare minimum of preparation needed to make it enjoyable, eaten with vinegared rice.
Are you adequate?
Any real fan of sushi knows that Flying Fish Roe is almost always really smelt roe. It is cheaper, and actually available to most diners whereas real flying fish roe is prohibitively expensive since it is rare outside of certain places. It looks and tastes the same to me, so ultimately I think you are getting what you paid for.
Same goes for crab. With the exception of softshell crab at sushi places the crab is always made from a imitation fish cake made from pollack.
The trick to good sushi is knowing your chef, which I find is a lot easier to do since you are usually sitting in front of him while he is preparing your meal. They will tell you what is fresh, what's really in such and such, etc.
It doesn't surprise me that a lot of fish is mislabeled... Since most of it is being caught on the other side of the world it goes through many hands before hitting your plate. Any number of people filling out forms, purchasing, etc, may get the type wrong... especially once it is cut up. There are no doubt scammers out there but I tend to believe it is more ignorance than malice that is mislabeling the majority of the fish. There are so many sushi places springing up that just don't have the history and training that sushi chefs in Japan have.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin