DNA testing: Is your Friday night takeaway the reel deal?

George Clark, MSC Senior Commercial Manager for the UK explains, “British consumers are more savvy than ever when it comes to food provenance. They want to know exactly what is in their food and where it comes from – especially when they’re choosing fish specifically for its environmental credentials. The DNA results are clear, your Friday night takeaway is far more likely to be the fish you think you’ve bought if it’s MSC labelled. It’ll also be sustainable, responsibly caught and fully traceable.” [2] 

 

The overall results indicate a marked improvement in mislabelling in the industry. In 2014, the consumer organisation Which? conducted a study of fish and chip shops in conjunction with the Institute of Global Food Security (IGFS), Queen’s University Belfast. Their Stop Food Fraud campaign, found one in six (16%) fish were mislabelled [3]. The MSC tests also show that British chippies are far ahead of the global seafood mislabelling rate of 30% [4].

 

Professor Chris Elliott, founder of the IGFS, comments, “It’s reassuring that the level of fish mislabelling in the UK is much lower than other reported regions in the world. However, the fact that the MSC certified shops performed so much better is a clear indication of the importance of the programme. Not only does it help assure customers of the sustainability of their fish but also that they are getting what they’ve paid for.”

DNA testing results
The DNA tests were conducted by SASA laboratory on samples of battered fish from 122 shops in the UK and Ireland, half of which were MSC certified [5]. The results showed that five out of the nearby 61 non-MSC shops (8.2%) sampled served fish that differed from the species advertised. One of them was serving cheaper whiting (Merlangius merlangus) instead of cod (Gadus morhua).  In contrast, only one sample from the 61 MSC certified shops (1.64%) was found to be haddock instead of cod.

 

The MSC label assures diners that a fish is not only sustainable and fully traceable, but also the species it claims to be. Independent DNA testing is a key component in the monitoring of the effectiveness of the MSC programme as a whole.

 

Fish and chip shops that sell MSC labelled seafood are helping to protect fish supplies for the future by supporting sustainable fishing practices and encouraging other fisheries to reach the MSC standard. 

 

Sustainable Fish Cities is calling for sustainable fish to be a priority in the upcoming General Election and through Brexit negotiations. Please write to your MP now to ensure these issues are on the agenda.

 

 

 

[1] 5.36 times more likely as calculated using the Odds Ratio, where MSC certification is viewed as the ‘treatment’ and misdescription as the ‘event’.
See http://www.biochemia-medica.com/content/odds-ratio-calculation-usage-and-interpretation

[2] DNA tests on MSC products in the past have shown consistently that in most cases (97.8 – 100% of products tested ) the fish purchased is the species it claims to be.

[3] Professor Chris Elliot, Institute of Global Food Security, Queens University Belfast, Which? September 2014 https://press.which.co.uk/whichpressreleases/fishy-findings-in-chip-shop-tests/

[4] Reported by Pardo et al. 2016 “Misdescription incidents in seafood sector” published in the journal Food Control 62, pages 277-283. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095671351530270X

[5] The MSC regularly carries out authentication tests on MSC ecolabelled products collected at certified dealers as part of assurance activities. In this study, an MSC fish meal was anonymously purchased without prior warning from every certified fish and chip shop during March – October 2016 (61 shops at the time) and an equivalent product of the same species was purchased from the nearest available non-MSC shop. The samples (61 MSC and 61 non-MSC) were DNA tested to verify the species by an independent laboratory, the Wildlife DNA Forensics – Diagnostics, Wildlife & Molecular Biology Section at Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA). SASA is accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) to carry out Species identification by DNA sequencing.

The negative results that indicated misdescription incidents  are shown in the table below:

 

Sample type	Species purchased	Result species
MSC certified shop 1	Cod	Melanogrammus aeglefinus (haddock)
Non-MSC certified shop 1	Haddock	Gadus morhua (Atlantic cod)
Non-MSC certified shop 2	Cod	M. aeglefinus (haddock)
Non-MSC certified shop 3	Haddock	G. morhua (Atlantic cod)
Non-MSC certified shop 4	Cod	M. aeglefinus (haddock)
Non-MSC certified shop 5	Cod	Merlangius merlangus (whiting)