Tuna labels matter in Europe: Mislabelling rates in different tuna products

Archive ouverte

Sotelo, Carmen G. | Velasco, Amaya | Perez-Martin, Ricardo, I | Kappel, Kristina | Schroeder, Ute | Verrez-Bagnis, Veronique | Jerome, Marc | Mendes, Rogerio | Silva, Helena | Mariani, Stefano | Griffiths, Andrew

Edité par CCSD ; Public Library of Science -

International audience. Tuna fisheries and processing represent economic activities of paramount importance around the world. Most of these products are traded for human consumption and in general are highly demanded commodities. However, not all tuna products achieve the same market price, some consumers are willing to pay a huge amount of money for certain species (i.e. Japanese market for Bluefin tuna) while other species are rather affordable (i.e. Skipjack tuna), therefore mislabelling has been observed frequently. We collected and analysed 545 tuna samples in six European countries, including fresh, frozen and canned products, and we have investigated whether or not these products were correctly labelled under European and national legislations. We found an overall mislabelling rate of 6.79%; in particular, 6.70% of the fresh and frozen tuna products and 7.84% of canned tuna were mislabelled, and only in the case of fresh and frozen tuna samples significant differences among countries were found. Mislabelling rates for Atlantic Bluefin tuna labelled products were very high, ranging from 50 up to 100%. In general, mislabelling was higher when specific names were included in the labels. The “tuna” umbrella term is a very popular one with consumers, but also one that remains vulnerable to ambiguity, hampering efforts towards market transparency and with potential negative consequences to the adequate management of tuna species stocks.

Consulter en ligne

Suggestions

Du même auteur

Low mislabeling rates indicate marked improvements in European seafood market operations

Archive ouverte | Mariani, Stefano | CCSD

International audience. Over the span of a decade, genetic identification methods have progressively exposed the inadequacies of the seafood supply chain, revealing previously unrecognized levels of seafood fraud, r...

Current Methods for Seafood Authenticity Testing in Europe: is there a Need for Harmonisation?

Archive ouverte | Griffiths, Andrew M. | CCSD

Mislabelling of food products has recently received a great deal of public scrutiny, but it remains unclear exactly what methods are being utilised in laboratories testing the authenticity of foods. In order to gain insight into t...

Fish Traceability and Authenticity

Archive ouverte | Gonzalez Sotelo, Carmen | CCSD

This chapter first reviews the traceability issues and technologies to be used all along the fish industries. Also, both the current analytical methods for the control of seafood traceability and authenticity and the emerging meth...

Chargement des enrichissements...