When the actress plays a role, it’s artistry. When tilapia is passed off as snapper, it’s fraud.
We called it “cluck-cluck cutlet of the sea” – without much flavor of its own, tilapia takes on the flavors of the other ingredients in a range of recipes.
Now the New York Times is calling it “the Meryl Streep of seafood” – reduced to fillets and frozen, tilapia is being passed off as pricier fish such as grouper or albacore in supermarkets and restaurants around the country. This according to a new report, “Bait and Switch: How Seafood Fraud Hurts Our Oceans, Our Wallets and Our Health,” from Oceana, an international organization with the mission of protecting and restoring the world’s oceans.
More than a third of seafood may be mislabeled, says the Oceana report. Remedies include tracking information about seafood every step of the process that gets its from the water onto our plates.
Trade data can supply information about the steps that bring the seafood from overseas into the US – that would be almost 85% of the seafood consumed in America.
Our latest Tops in Trade report draws on Datamyne’s bill of lading trade data on frozen tilapia imported from China during first quarter 2011 to reveal the top 10 companies that ship the seafood to the US, the carriers that handle the shipments, the ports of arrival, and the consignees that take delivery.
Click here to download Tops in Trade: Frozen Tilapia US Imports from China in pdf for FREE.