Food Research International 121 (2019) 723–729 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Food Research International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodres Survey of mislabelling across finfish supply chain reveals mislabelling both T outside and within Canada ⁎ Hanan R. Shehataa,b, Danielle Bourquea,b, Dirk Steinkeb, Shu Chenc, Robert Hannera,b, a Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada b Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada c Laboratory Services Division, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Seafood has become one of the most heavily traded food commodities in the era of globalization. International Seafood seafood supply chains are complex and contend with many difficulties in bringing an enormous variety of Substitution products to market. A major challenge involves accurately labelling products such that they comply with a BOLD diverse set of regulatory frameworks, ranging from country-of-origin through to the final point of consumer sale. DNA barcoding Thanks to DNA barcoding, seafood mislabelling is now recognized as a global problem, with potentially negative Importer impacts on human health, economy and the environment. Mislabelling can result from species misidentification, Retailer Regulatory framework use of inappropriate common names, incomplete and/or out-dated regulatory frameworks, or through market substitution. While prior studies have focused primarily on retail and food service establishments, this study used barcoding to assess rates of finfish mislabelling at multiple points in the supply chain within Ontario, Canada.A total of 203 specimens from 12 key targeted species were collected from varied importers, registered processing plants and retailers in Southern Ontario and identified using DNA barcoding. Species identity of samples was used to assess conformity of labelling against the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) Fish List, which revealed an overall mislabelling rate of 32.3% among targeted species. The mislabelling rate was significantly different between samples collected from importers and retailers. Among the mislabelled samples wereseven samples that originated from US and were properly labelled according to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Seafood List. This study evaluated the integrity of chain of custody documents and identified dis- crepancies in 43 samples (21.4%). Implementing seafood traceability throughout the supply chain and har- monizing labelling regulations between countries can help to ensure industry compliance in a globalized market, while sampling at multiple points in the supply chain can help to reveal causes. 1. Introduction unlawful practices such as illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) and poor regulations on aquaculture (Spink & Moyer, 2011; Seafood mislabelling is a serious problem that demonstrates the Pardo et al., 2016; Jacquet & Pauly, 2008). vital role and need for authenticity and traceability measures to control Complex supply chains are a major contributing factor to seafood food fraud and its associated health risks (Spink & Moyer, 2011). Pre- mislabelling, as seafood is the most traded food commodity worldwide vious studies conducted over the past five years in Canada and world- (Pardo et al., 2016; Koonse, 2016). The seafood supply chains consist of wide reported mislabelling rates ranging from 5% to 100%, averaging several steps starting from fishing (fisheries) or production (aqua- at 30% (Naaum et al., 2016; Pardo et al., 2016). The most common culture), transport to first buyer or primary processor, processing/ form of mislabelling is species substitution; however, other forms of packaging, transport to wholesalers, distribution to retailers and res- mislabelling exist such as substituting a wild caught fish with a farmed taurants and finally to consumers. As a consequence, pinpointing where one, which may contain varying levels of chemicals and antibiotics mislabelling occurs becomes more challenging (Leal et al., 2015; (Cabello et al., 2013; (FDA). Eating Fish: What Pregnant Women and Muñoz-Colmenero et al., 2016). It may be intentional, and economic- Parents Should Know, 2017). Seafood mislabelling poses a threat to the ally motivated, at any point in the supply chain, but may also be un- economy, to consumer health, and to sustainable management of intentional; for example, caught fish may be misidentified during overexploited fish species. Additionally, seafood mislabelling facilitates fishing due to similarity in physical/morphological characteristics ⁎ Corresponding author at: Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada. E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Hanner). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2018.12.047 Received 8 February 2018; Received in revised form 4 December 2018; Accepted 22 December 2018 Available online 24 December 2018 0963-9969/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. H.R. Shehata et al. Food Research International 121 (2019) 723–729 (Muñoz-Colmenero et al., 2016). Errors may also happen during dis- Mexico (10), New Zealand (7), Norway (2), Pakistan (2), Peru (5), tribution especially in instances when a large volume of fish needs to be Philippines (2), Portugal (7), Russia (1), Senegal (1), Sri Lanka (3), processed in a short time period (Muñoz-Colmenero et al., 2016). Once Trinidad (5), US (34), Vietnam (6) and UK (6). The declared storage processed, products can be difficult to identify and mix-ups can occur. conditions of collected samples were frozen for 55 samples, refrigerated However, patterns of market substitution suggest economically moti- for 119 samples, refrigerated but previously frozen for 28 samples and vated adulteration is not uncommon. one live sample. Twenty-one samples were Marine Stewardship Council Modern molecular methods such as DNA barcoding provide useful (MSC) certified, one sample was Aquaculture Stewardship Council tools for seafood authentication. These methods are particularly valu- (ASC) certified, and five samples were Ocean Wise recommended able for processed specimens where morphological features are lost (Table A1). To comply with the minimum information required for (Pardo et al., 2016; Muñoz-Colmenero et al., 2016; Chin et al., 2016). market surveys using DNA barcoding, metadata included inspector's DNA barcoding depends on sequencing of an ~650 bp fragment of the name, date/time of collection, declared common name, brand name, mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene (COX-I) which has been weight, country of origin, packer/manufacturer, storage conditions, widely used for species identification (Chin et al., 2016; Hanner et al., registered establishment name and address, city, type of registered es- 2011; Ward et al., 2009). The retrieved sequences are queried against tablishment (importer, retailer, registered processing plant), detailed reference databases such as the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) or location, and photographs for the product, master carton and labels (if the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GenBank to applicable) (Naaum et al., 2015). infer a species identification of an unknown based on its barcode se- quence. 2.3. DNA extraction, PCR amplification of COX-1 gene, sequencing and Most previous surveys for seafood mislabelling focused on retail sequence analysis outlets and food service establishments and are unable to assess where in the supply chain problems arise. Through collaboration with the Muscle tissues of finfish samples were subsampled for DNA extrac- Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), finfish samples from com- tion (~10 mg of tissue). Subsampling tools were cleaned using monly mislabelled products were collected from different points in the ELIMINase® (04-355-32, Fisher Scientific) before handling the first supply chain including importers, registered processing plants and re- sample, between samples and after handling the last sample by dipping tailers. Furthermore, chain of custody documents were made available the tools into ELIMINase for 5 s, followed by three washes in deionized for this study in order to evaluate their integrity. The objectives of this water. DNA extraction was performed using the Qiagen DNeasy® Blood study were to use DNA barcoding technology to study prevalence of and Tissue kit (Qiagen, Mississauga, Canada) according to manufac- finfish mislabelling among targeted taxa at different stages ofthesea- turer's instructions. food supply chain (in an effort to pinpoint the sources of mislabelling Fish cocktail primers were used to amplify the COX-1 gene from and to determine to what extent each step in the supply chain con- finfish DNA (Table 1). When fish cocktail primers failed to amplify tributes to finfish mislabelling in Southern Ontario), to establish base- COX-1 gene from finfish DNA, mammal cocktail primers were used line data on key commodities, and to evaluate discrepancies in chain of (Table 1). Mammal cocktail primers were designed for barcoding of custody documents for finfish products. mammals but were found to perform well with seafood when fish pri- mers failed (Ivanova et al., 2007). When both fish cocktail and mammal 2. Materials and methods cocktail primers failed, mini-barcoding primers were used (Table 1). Mini-barcode primers amplify a shorter region (below 200 bp), which 2.1. Specimen collection is advantageous when attempting to amplify degraded DNA (Ivanova