Boston area markets caught mislabeling fish

After a five-month Boston Globe investigation into the mislabeling of fish, it was found that many upscale restaurants, grocery stores and seafood markets advertise one type of fish but sell you another.

The Globe hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on fish samples purchased from 134 shops across the Boston region. “Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name – 48 percent.”

The Globe did state the mislabeling “happens for a range of reasons, from outright fraud to a chef’s ignorance to the sometimes real difficulty of discerning one fillet from another. But industry specialists say money is commonly the motivator.”