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Consequences of seafood mislabeling for marine populations and fisheries management
- Source :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Significance The consumption of an important food source, seafood, has increased over the past half century. It is now the most globally traded food commodity and its supply chains are often complex and opaque. Contemporaneous with the growth of overall production, evidence of seafood product mislabeling has become ubiquitous. We show that enabling conditions exist for mislabeling to generate negative impacts on marine populations and to support consumption of products from poorly managed fisheries. More holistic approaches that include consumer and industry engagement, well-designed and targeted testing, and regulatory traceability programs could reduce seafood mislabeling and improve transparency related to impacts of seafood product consumption.<br />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.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Aquatic Organisms
food fraud
seafood trade
Natural resource economics
Food fraud
Fishing
Commodity
Population
Fisheries
Social Sciences
010501 environmental sciences
Sustainability Science
01 natural sciences
Food Supply
Food Labeling
species substitution
education
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Consumption (economics)
education.field_of_study
Multidisciplinary
Geography
010604 marine biology & hydrobiology
United States
seafood mislabeling
Product (business)
Seafood
Sustainability
Business
Fisheries management
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 10916490 and 00278424
- Volume :
- 117
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....5cd2e27ba779a907a1ae43fd4c7b62d3