There’s a recently introduced bill up for debate in the California Senate that could fine and put suppliers and restaurant owners in jail for a year for selling mislabeled seafood. The Sacramento Bee cites an Oceana seafood fraud study that reportedly ranked Southern California with the highest seafood mislabeling rate in that nation, with 52 percent of grocery stores, restaurants and sushi eateries selling mislabeled fish.
While seafood is not the only industry with fraud, it creates headlines on a regular occasion. Given that the industry has more than 100 commercially available species with a wide price range, it’s no surprise that a few bad eggs tarnish the industry’s reputation.
I’ll play devil’s advocate for a bit because that’s what editors do best, poke holes in things (some call it a license to nit-pick). What if that seafood comes in the kitchen door of a restaurant, inspected for quality and is then put in a container that is labeled incorrectly? I’ve been in many kitchens where the seafood is taken out of the package and then put in a nondescript white plastic tub and put in a walk-in cooler with nary a label. What if the front of the house forgets to update the menu and leaves last night’s white fish on the menu but a different white fish is served?
This is not a free pass for restaurants to get things wrong, but admission that mistakes can, and do, happen everywhere. While traceability standards and country of origin labeling requirements have upped the labeling anté for retail seafood, accidents are bound to happen on the foodservice end.
Consumers should be served the fish they order, but humans are not infallible. Does the average waitstaff know what different fish look like after they’re cooked and covered with a sauce or blackened crust? They are the last line before the customer, but typically are paid the lowest wages.
Let’s also consider the hypothetical enforcement issue: How would the state police labeling at the restaurant level? With 90,000 eating and drinking locations in California, it seems it would be an impossible task. While the proposed legislation has good intentions, history has proven that the fix is more than just weeding out a few crooks that need to walk the straight and narrow.
