Gucciardi writes: "Do you enjoy the taste of tuna? If you answered yes to that question, there's a very large chance that you actually enjoy the taste of many bizarre and exotic imposter 'fake tuna' fish types."
59% of tuna is not only mislabeled but is almost entirely compromised of a fish once banned by the FDA. (photo: unknown)
59% of Tuna Mislabeled, Fake Tuna Linked to 'Anal Oil Leakage'
25 February 13
o you enjoy the taste of tuna? If you answered yes to that question, there's a very large chance that you actually enjoy the taste of many bizarre and exotic imposter 'fake tuna' fish types that have been peddled and mislabeled by the seafood industry and restaurants alike - even a 'snake mackerel' fish linked to side effects like anal oil leakage.
The new genetic testing campaign kickstarted and funded by the nonprofit organization known as Oceana, a group whose mission statement involves protecting the world's oceans, reveals that 59% of tuna is not only mislabeled but is almost entirely compromised of a fish once banned by the FDA. Sushi restaurants were the worst offenders by far, but the tests spanned throughout restaurants and grocery stores alike. Altogether, the findings oust over half of tuna fish as fraudulent.
As you can see for yourself in the report by Oceana, the numerical breakdown of tuna fraud (especially 'white tuna') paints a picture of just how far companies will go to deliver rubbish products and deceive the consumer:
- Between restaurants and grocery stories in the US alike, 59% overall of the tuna tested was definitely not tuna as found by genetic testing.
- Sushi restaurants had the worst record, with every single restaurant's 'tuna' tested in major cities like DC, Chicago, Austin, and New York City coming back as fraudulent.
- A whopping 84% of 'white tuna' was actually escolar, the snake mackerel fish that causes oily anal leakage and was banned by the FDA until 1992. It is still banned in Japan, Italy, and requires warning labels regarding the leaky discharge in Canada, Sweden, and Denmark.
Oceana also offers a graphical breakdown:
Rampant Food Mystery Ingredients | From Fake Tuna to Horsemeat
The blatant lack of knowledge regarding the actual ingredients in so-called 'tuna' products is reminiscent of recent food ingredient disasters such as the Burger King horsemeat incident, in which Burger King was forced to admit that consumers had been eating either horse or donkey meat in their juicy Whoppers for who knows how long. An admission that not only grossed a lot of people out and emotionally touched a lot of horse lovers, but brought up a great consideration: we really don't even know what we're putting into our mouths.
We've even seen rampant food fraud in the seafood industry before, with food geneticists revealing a large percentage of the entire market is actually filled with mislabeled fish. Oftentimes, it becomes an even greater concern when entering into the realm of health. Many 'wild-caught' fish varieties are scams and are actually heavily processed, with the FDA inspecting only around 2% of seafood imports.
We know there exists a number of serious additives that lurk in our food supply like MSG and various neurotoxic food coloring ingredients, but the fact of the matter is it even comes down to the very food product itself. Many of you probably do not consumer tuna for a number of reasons, such as the likelihood that it was harvested from Fukushima-touched Pacific waters, or perhaps because it contains mercury or was taken from the oil-plagued Gulf of Mexico. Regardless of the reason, I am sure you see the validity in highlighting this information for consumers.
When we can't even be sure what we're eating, even down to the very base product itself, we have a very serious problem for consumers. A problem that I don't think producers seem to care about given that this fraud is so prevalent - and it is undoubtedly a culinary fraud that expands far beyond the seafood industry.
Additional sources:The Atlantic
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Yes! You did! Calamari on your menu last night was very likely pig sphincter. Hog bung, according to NPR's This American Life is passed off routinely as a crisp appetizer in restaurants. Before you gag again, check out the taste-test story here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/doppelgangers
. . . or that your $150/ounce Russian Caviar is stretched by adding toad or knewt eggs to the mix? Or that slugs out of your neighbor's yard are stuffed (tail-first) into used snail shells; broiled to perfection in garlic butter and served for your enjoyment . . . as escargot?
The list of fake and mislabeled foods extends right down to your GMO grains, fish & animals . . . and it ain't a short list!
But, Hey! This is the USA! Corporate America & the FDA don't think that We The People need to know what is being packaged and sold to us as our food.
.
And, these scams WILL continue, simply because our oceans are now SO seriously overfished that things like REAL TUNA are becoming endangered species. However, no one wants the public to KNOW that.
In addition, acidification of the oceans is INCREASING sea life die off, so enjoy that $50,000 Tuna (if verified Tuna) whilst ye may ! If you love eating fish into the future, you might as well get an industrial package of depends and start to love escolar. Soon it will be the ONLY "tuna" in the ocean.
1. Atlantic Swordfish do not reproduce until they are about 250 pounds. The average swordfish that reaches the piers now-a-days is less than 150 pounds. We are eating our seed corn!
2. When one species goes unsustainable, it is almost immediately supplanted by some (previously thought of as ) trash fish which is re-named and hailed as a "new" gourmet find. If history holds true, this "new" fish is also, eventually, fished out. . . . and the cycle goes on and on.
Good point maddave -- this is America, home of brave and land of the fraud.
Union leaders get jail time for standing up for workers. Business moguls, on the other hand, can poison people by day, and then take a politician to dinner that night.
What a rigged system! Only about a dozen members of Congress are any good. That's it. 12! What other logical explanation can there be for how low our nation has sunk?
It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:
"Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief."
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
This ignored of course Floyd's reputation as a wife-abuser, but we do love our Robin Hoods. Black Bart supposedly refused to rob what appeared to him to be the less affluent passengers on a stage, and the folksy hero inspired an old cowboy song:
"Too long in vain I've toiled for bread
for honor fame and for riches
but on my toes too long you've tread
all you fine-haried sons of bitches!"
... Then he'd go off to the woods
and leave the box where they'd find it
he'd leave a note not the goods
"Black Bart the Po 8" he'd sign it.
This didn't keep him from rifling the mails, from which he took a lot of money that belonged to the poorest of the era.
The FDA and our Congress do not push to have THESE lethal chemicals regulated out. They'd rather allow 440,000 Americans, and millions of people worldwide, to die due to the smoke from these products...whet her or not the people who die have EVER smoked! Over 4,000 chemicals are released into the atmosphere with every puff and people get ill and die from second- and third-hand smoking as a result.
Anal oil leakage is horrible, but death...well... trumps leakage.
When will the FDA wake up and do their ministerial duty?
N.
Take back your food supply people.
I'm sure there are cockroach bits in our cornflakes, too, but at least they're mostly cornflakes.
It is a reference to the human that consumes the fish.
Other than that note, it IS *exactly* what is SOUNDS LIKE it is !
Why ? Oily anal leakage ?
BUT ALL THE NEO'S, THEY DO BLEED YOU
OUT Of ENFORCEMENT, EXCEPT FOR THE VERY FEW
THE VILLAINAIRES LIE, SAYING:
"THEY'RE THERE FOR YOU"
NOT! Time to wake up, folks, and get out of naive m.o.. With regs and enforcement of same having gone bye bye, warrior woman is so correct - "That is why we are where we are today."
You don't want to hear
what they put in beer.
The entire 'Smaller Government' knee jerk, off the cuff CONservative Talkingpoint has turned out to be a CON, a Flim Flam, a Big Hoodwinking.., a snowballing, corporate-in-co mmon, evolving plethora of outcomes on behalf of extreme Conservative Ideology merged with the natural want and greed of Big Business to create as much dismantled-litt le Non-Government as possible, and which, is as powerless as possible to interfere with Big Business efforts to obtain greater profit and power without fear of regulatory oversight, tax concerns or judicial sanctions.
What have WE done to ourselves by going along with this?
WE have literally removed the Powers of WE the People through DeRegulation, De-Taxation, Lost Tax Structuring, and by Firing our OWN Civil Servants who worked directly for us and did the job for us better and for less money ..AND.. handed it ALL over to Big Business and Corporations which have ONLY their Shareholder's Wealth and Well Being in mind.
They are promulgating new rules with Homeland Security. Since '03, 200000 producers of consumables we import must register. A few ex-FDA legal staff instantly built companies to help foreign farmers, fishermen, etc. to complete the lengthy docs for registration. I tried to help a French wine producer and could barely figure it out, but once you understand it's a 15 minute process for which they charge up to $300! But the FDA had to hire the people to look at 200K 12 page documents, then store, file, etc.
Initially it was once, but last Fall, they decided everyone had to register every 2 years. Bonanza for the crooks, bonanza for the FDA Dept. Heads with thousands of now-permanent employees.
A similar process is now set up to send in a SAMPLE product to a potential US buyer. It requires weeks. It requires the potential buyer to commit a fraud!!! It balloons the Dept. No bombs found so far in the canned products or bottles of wine.
Then there are new regs that delay incoming food products on the foreign docks and when they get here.
ALL OF THIS EXPANSION IS FOR SECURITY, not food quality. Meanwhile, the top bureaucrats in FDA get RICH from salaries and under-the table emollients.
But it's keeping thousands of new employees off the "unemployed" stats.
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