Like prostitution, food substitution is one of the oldest trades in the book. "We're being codded" Part II

Food substitution or food swindling in order to make money is one of the oldest tricks in the book. While may think what we eat today is dominated by food additives and unnatural manufacturing, our range of foods has to be better than a century ago when particularly urban people were at the complete mercy of food sellers.

Freidrich Engels even wrote about it - pointing out that as working men got their wages on a Saturday in industrial Britain they had to buy their family food on Saturday evening. This was the beginning of what we know today as evening grocery shopping. And as much of it was conducted in candlelight, this was where a lot of the chicanery took place. As the good food was sold off from the morning onwards, the ordinary working person was left with the poor produce that remained by the evening or produce that was discounted precisely because it was foul. Rotten meat was covered with a layer of healthy fat, aged butter was covered with a coating of fresh butter, oranges were boiled to make them weighty and shiny and in the case of fish, their gills were painted red to make them look fresh.



Sadly there are still plenty of people out there willing to pull the wool over our eyes. In 2009 the Food Safety Authority brought two Irish companies to court for the mislabelling of fish. They won their case against one of the companies who was passing off farmed salmon as wild salmon; an altogether rarer and far more expensive product. One of these companies is a very well known fish retailer and wholesaler who got off on a technicality but was nonetheless happy to pass off farmed salmon as wild salmon and collect the huge difference in price for quite some time.


So like prostitution, food substitution - as one of the oldest trades in the book is still very much alive and well. But who's going to take on the villians of the piece? Following this most recent survey on fish mislabelling and recognising the scale of the problem, the FSAI are introducing annual checks for fish and food businesses that fail to keep appropriate traceability records or who are found to be intentionally misleading consumers. They also say they will take repeat offenders to court but for the moment most of them will get off with a verbal warning. Unfortunately that is how the legislation stands. Seems a bit lily-livered to me.


One of the sad facts behind the mislabelling story is that most of the fish that is being passed off as cod is imported. Not only that but much of the white fish we eat is imported. White fish, behind farmed salmon, is the second most popular seafood in this country and the similarities between filleted white fish make substituting species easy to do. Most people don’t know the difference.

In terms of our own lovely local seafood catch, 80% of Irish fish is exported to Europe where there is a ready market in France and Spain for high quality, fresh whole fish. Unfortunately we Irish consumers don't seem to be switched on to how good the product is on our own doorstep and instead eat cheap imports that come from Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scandanavia which have been ususally frozen for several days. This imported fish is cheaper, and comes in huge volumes so this makes it more attractive for supermarkets in particular. It also comes filleted, ready for sale and Irish fish just can’t compete.

So, what do we do about cod?

In the FSAI report, fake Cod is the fish that keeps cropping up again and again. In fact nearly three quarters of the "smoked cod" on offer to Irish consumers that the agency tested wasn't cod at all but Pollack, Coley, Saithe or God knows what else. But there's two interesting things that emanate from this - one is that even though stocks are shrinking, Irish shoppers still want to eat cod, whether it's bought in a supermarket or a chipper. So the mislabelling of cod perpetuates the myth that there is plenty of cod about. This means that Irish consumers are failing to adjust our shopping habits and our wallets, to food that is endangered or comes with a high environmental cost.

So what can consumers do to eat more Irish fish and avoid eating something that is falsely labelled? Firstly if they buy their fish locally it’s the easiest possible option. In Dublin you can still buy fish direct off boats coming into Howth, harbour, (pictured) Dun Laoghaire and Dalkey and there are fish dealers in this area who will get you what you want straight from the boat. Local fish mongers, though scarce, are a great option and if it comes to supermarkets, buying Marine Stewardship Council certified fish gives you a certainty that it’s sustainable and has a country of origin label.


A new scheme soon to be brought in by Supervalue will see Irish fish being retailed on their shelves which is traceable straight back to the boat it came in on which is really great.

Ironically, one positive thing coming from this fish mislabelling affair is that it reveals we are patently happy to eat lots of other fish besides cod, and in fact we didn’t seem to notice the difference. But if most of us are happy to eat cheaper fish, the savings from doing so should be made by us, not by someone trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

If you're interested in fish stocks and their sustainability check out Ocean 2012 which is a coalition of groups lobbying for change and sustainable practices in the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. They're at http://www.ocean2012.eu/ and the Irish representation is on twitter at @OCEAN2012IE - they will soon have news coming up on Irish events for European Fish Week June 4th - 12th.

Would you like fries with that? We're being codded, again.

A year on from when I first wrote about the fish labelling scandal going on in Ireland it seems nothing has changed. In the second survey into what exactly we are buying when we purchase "cod", the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has revealed that nearly one in five fish are not what it says on the label. So what are the implications for consumers and does this point to murky goings on in the fish trade?

This most recent survey was carried out in retail outlets, fish shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and takeaways all over Ireland. The FSAI found that 19% of products it sampled were labelled incorrectly. The largest sector selling us fake cod was takeaways, with 32% of takeaways found to have mislabelled fish produce on sale.

Do takeaways rely on people being either (a) drunk and on their way home from the pub when they buy their "cod" and chips, or (b) their product being so doused in salt and vinegar that your box of fish and chips could be in fact battered Nike trainer with deep fried turnip peelings?

The point is that this isn't so much a food safety issue but common or garden food swindling, based on making money from innocent consumers. Cod is generally an expensive fish and in this case it’s being replaced with other varieties, and food businesses are increasing their own profit margins by selling fake produce.

This survey was undertaken last autumn when cod stocks are traditionally low and found that fish such as pollack, coley or smelt were being sold as cod. At that time cod was about 11 euros a kilo; pollack about 6 or 7 euro a kilo so you stand to make a lot of money if you can replace one with the other.

Okay, so a bit of coley posing as cod won't kill us. However, in terms of food safety, food substitution in the past has had fatal consequences. In North America two people died from eating puffer fish that had been labelled and sold as monkfish; a pretty terrifying outcome. As consumers, we need to have confidence in what it says on the label. Particularly in the EU, we are under the impression that strict policies on labelling and traceability are in place. Instead, what this study reveals is a level of disfunction in the labelling of seafood in Europe.

What’s shocking about this is not the first time that mislabelling of fish has found to be an issue in Ireland. About 12 months ago when I first wrote on the subject UCD did a study on fish and found much the same problem. A quarter of the fish they examined was mislabelled. In one major supermarket chain, seven out of their 16 "cod" products weren't cod. The research calculated that by selling cheaper alternatives, this retailer could be getting inflated profits of between €400,000 to €550,000 per year on Irish cod sales.

So who is doing the duping – is it the supermarkets, the fish and chip shops or is it the fish dealers who are selling them the fish? The FSAI can’t name and shame the outlets or merchants involved in this sting so to speak. They found that some of the mislabelling may be due to a certain amount of ignorance, but a few names popped up in the retail and wholesale side where several instances occurred, especially in the battered and smoked fish. They’re being investigated as this would suggest that it was more than accidental.

Unfortunately the penalities are low even if charges are brought and while you can name and shame an outlet for food safety breaches, mislabelling food comes under “misleading the consumer” which hasn’t huge penalities – most will get a verbal warning, then if they persist be taken to court.

Not very heartening for the consumer is it? Will it take a serious health incident arising from food mislabelling to change the law? Why can't we find out who the worst operators are and therefore make our own choice as consumers to stop being codded at the fish counter? If you want to hear more on this topic I'll soon upload my interview on RTE radio with Pat Kenny teasing through the issue. And no, there won't be any bad jokes, I promise.

In part two of this post, I'll be examining the sometimes hideous, sometimes hysterically funny history of food substitution and I'll have some tips for how to buy Irish fish, that's the genuine article. We've so much great fish in Ireland it's ridiculous that we're buying not only fake product but fake product that's mostly coming from outside the EU. But that's a whole other story... part two coming soon.

And I thought salmon was naturally that colour

Smart Consumer: The unpalatable truth about the salmon on your plate
By Suzanne Campbell
Thursday September 23 2010



Close your eyes and picture a salmon. Odds are that you think of a gleaming muscular fish leaping up a river in full flood. It's this image which informs our decision making at the fish counter.



We also think of salmon as a healthy food -- rich in omega-3 fish oils and a tasty source of low-fat protein. But a new book by American food writer Paul Greenberg probes into the image of salmon, revealing some uncomfortable truths about Ireland's favourite fish.
More than 99% of the salmon sitting on Irish supermarket counters and in delicatessens is farmed.



Some of it is Irish fish but most of what we eat originates in Scotland or Norway.
Wild salmon is scarce around the world and with the ban on drift netting in Ireland, it's now out of reach for most of us and will only appear on the menus of very good restaurants or in small quantities at specialised fishmongers.



The fact that we are eating almost exclusively farmed salmon doesn't seem to affect our appetites for it. What Greenberg points out is that while salmon has obvious health benefits, questions have to be asked about what eating farmed salmon does to the availability of other fish. The book also shows how our demand for cod, tuna and sea bass led to their shrinking availability.



But for Irish consumers who return to the fish counter again and again for salmon, what does he say about how healthy a choice it really is? Salmon from fish farms are artificially spawned, reared in pens with thousands of other fish all swimming tightly together in circles and fed a diet that contains colorants to make its flesh pink. There's little natural about a farmed salmon except that it's still living in water.



Even less appetising is that farmed salmon are fed pellets made from ground-up wild fish, mixed with soya and cereals -- not quite its natural diet. The pellets also contain a pigment to colour the salmon's flesh; the tone depends on the country the fish is destined for. So you'll find farmed salmon in South America very red in colour, whereas we in Ireland prefer it a soft pink.
Critics of farmed salmon find this 'Dulux colour card' approach enough reason to boycott it, but the fish farming sector claims that the colourant is nothing more than a natural carotenoid pigment named astaxanthin; exactly the same molecule that wild salmon get from eating small shellfish.



Astaxanthin is now made in a laboratory rather than by shellfish, so what are we worried about? Aren't many of the foods that we eat artificially coloured? Or is it just that colouring the flesh of live animals crosses some kind of line?



Of more impact is the colossal amount of other fish species that go into creating the fish pellets farmed salmon eat. Greenberg points out that it takes up to six pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of salmon and that part of the problem with the world's diminishing fish stocks is this hoovering up of other species to feed our insatiable appetite for pink fish.



The farmed salmon currently on our fish counters has also been genetically selected to have a quicker growth rate. Since the Norwegians pioneered farming salmon on a mass scale they've engineered a fish that has double the growth rate of wild salmon. This super salmon matures faster and dominates salmon production across the world, so much so that three billion pounds of farmed salmon are produced globally; three times the amount of wild fish harvested.
While this may be hailed as a breakthrough by fish breeders, this immense salmon production has been at the cost of the nine billion pounds of wild fish that have been caught and ground into pellets to feed them.



Greenberg points out that as humans have been farming salmon since the 15th Century you'd think we'd have got it right by now, but sadly mistakes have been made.
Blood meal from chickens was routinely fed to salmon to provide micro nutrients and only banned after BSE came to light. Fish were also crammed into cages that were too small and sea lice proliferated, affecting other species.



In Ireland, Scotland and Norway, studies found that the presence of salmon farms increased the level of sea lice infestation on sea trout. It also badly affected Irish wild salmon.
But most detrimental to the image of farmed salmon was the extent to which they were found to contain PCBs -- polychlorinated biphenyls, which came to light in a report published in 2004.
PCBs are toxins which have found their way into fish from run-off into rivers of waste from manufacturing plants. They accumulate progressively over time meaning that those at the top of the food chain -- humans -- are exposed to the highest levels.



In the research published in the journal Science, farmed salmon was found to contain higher concentrations of PCBs than its wild counterpart. PCBs were subsequently banned, but not before confidence in farmed salmon had taken a hit. Many Irish fishermen still claim that the waste from salmon cages is not sufficiently washed out to sea and affects the local environment as waste pellets and faeces fall through the nets onto the seabed underneath. The Irish fish farming sector claims it's one of the cleanest in Europe as it is located in strong Atlantic seas which quickly get rid of the waste.



How to spot the best fish over the counter -

Salmon farming will continue to grow all over the world, despite its detractors. If you want to still eat fish with strong health benefits that doesn't wipe out our future choices of seafood, here are some alternatives.

For fish rich in Omega-3 oils, buy anchovies, sardines and mackerel. Mackerel and herring have healthy populations in Irish seas and have plenty of flavour; even when grilled and served with a simple salad.

Ling, blossom and coley are cheap substitutes for cod. They are so close in flavour, texture and appearance to cod that they have been found to be labelled and sold as their more expensive cousin.

If you really want salmon, ask for salmon that's farmed in Ireland at the fish counter of your supermarket or delicatessen. 75% of salmon produced in Ireland is organically certified, so not only is the cereal feed organic, the fish component of the pellets is of a low percentage and comes from monitored fish stocks. The stocking density in organic salmon cages is also less dense.

Buy fish in M&S -- they have been rated the leading retailer for responsible fishing by Greenpeace and only stock tuna caught by the pole and line system which is more sustainable.

Look out for the Bord Bia Seafood Circle mark at the supermarket fish counter or at the fish mongers. These fish sellers are the most educated in terms of the quality and source of the fish that they stock, and can give you the best information about what's fresh, in season and how to cook it.

Suzanne Campbell for The Irish Independent



Four Fish by Paul Greenberg is published by Penguin. Suzanne Campbell's food blog is at www.basketcasetheblog.blogspot.com