Born to be wild

My first ever foray into blogging in November last year was about food fraud, and I'm talking about it again today, living proof that what comes around goes around, I suppose. There's been lots of media interest over the last few weeks in our authenticity survey into farmed and wild fish.

That doesn't surprise me. Lots of consumers are interested in this issue.  A colleague was in Sainsbury's the other day and heard a woman at the fish counter seeking assurances that salmon described as 'wild' had not been farmed.

The survey we published today in the first instance looked at whether consumers were receiving information both production method and the geographical origin of the fish they are buying according to fish labelling rules.

This was followed by a second study on whether samples of 'wild' sea bass, sea bream and salmon were in fact wild?

To help establish this, some of the exciting developments I touched on in my earlier blog were used - looking at  the way the different diets of wild and farmed fish alter the fatty acid composition , and the carbon, oxygen and nitrogen isotopic signatures of the extracted fish oil.

What the survey has shown us is that awareness of the fish labelling rules is lowest among small businesses such as fishmongers, and also there is wider underlying problem with misdescription of 'wild' fish.

Our enforcement partners working in trading standards, who participated in the survey, are tackling this with follow-up visits to explain the law and we're planning to publish a simple guide on the regulations aimed at small businesses.

As regards wild fish, enforcement officers initially will be looking at traceability information with the possibility of taking further samples in the future. Got any comments? Have your say on the blog.