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A new surveillance project involving UCLA researchers and partners aims to remove "fake sushi" from the dinner plates of Los Angeles diners. The Los Angeles Seafood Monitoring Project Team – which includes university researchers, students, sushi restaurants and government regulators – is working to reduce the number of related frauds sushi and bad fish labeling.
Since April, scientists accompanied by 80 students from UCLA and several other students from Loyola Marymount and Cal State Universities in Los Angeles have purchased small sushi restaurants – each about the size of their own. a grain of corn – in 10 restaurants. Back in the laboratory, they extract the DNA and analyze the fish.
Each fish species has a unique genetic sequence. Researchers and students, enrolled in an introductory course in marine biology taught by lecturer Timery DeBoer, are studying DNA to distinguish one species of fish from another to help of a tool called DNA barcode.
The team's conclusion: "The bad labeling of sushi is ubiquitous, the intentional fraud is much less common," said Paul Barber, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and senior author of the book. an article about the project published in the newspaper. Borders in ecology and environment. "If we can solve problems of labeling error, we can focus on intentional fraud."
Why are sushi on your plate mislabelled? One of the key factors is the gap between the federal regulations of the Food and Drug Administration and the biological reality, said Barber, who cited this example:
"The yellowtail flounder has six species.According to the FDA, one of them can be called the yellowtail flounder and the other five must be called amberjack", said Barber. "In Japan, each of these six species of yellowtail flounder prepared by sushi chefs is sold under a different name. These fish have a different taste and cost. In the United States, five FDA organizations must be sold under one name. is the equivalent of saying that we know that there are Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars and BMWs, but you can call these only Toyotas or BMW.
"It's actually impossible for sushi restaurants to properly identify the fish that they serve for a number of fish species using the limited names recognized by the FDA," said Barber. .
Another example is the red snapper. What is sold is often a fish called sea bream, said senior author Demian Willette, who earned her PhD at UCLA and is now an assistant professor of biology at Loyola Marymount University.
The researchers work with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Los Angeles, which manages the FDA's guidelines for seafood that restaurants follow. They have already drafted recommendations for labeling yellowtail flounder.
Most of the fish eaten in the United States are not caught in this country and are often not processed here. It is therefore difficult to find their identity, said co-author Samantha Cheng, assistant professor of research in life sciences at Arizona State University. obtained his Ph.D. at UCLA from Barber.
What's a dinner that loves seafood?
When Cheng orders sushi at the restaurant, she asks what fish was used and where it came from.
"I want restaurants to know that people are concerned and I want them to make an effort to determine where they were caught," she said. "I take a lot of time at the sushi counter and at the grocery store to search for information about the fish on my phone."
"The best thing consumers can do is worry and ask questions," said Barber. "It's going to impact the entire supply chain, if enough people start asking where the fish comes from, the restaurants will ask that from their distributors, and the distributors will ask that from the fishermen. that if the payers the bills require liability. "
The monitoring project began as part of a UCLA marine science course, taught by Barber, in which Cheng and Willette were teaching assistants.
"As scientists, we generate data and can share what we know, but we need the restaurant industry and regulators, and we learn from it," Willette said. "We can not solve this problem only as scientists."
Researchers do not identify restaurants, but some have chosen to identify themselves. One of these restaurants is Sugarfish, which implements the project's suggestions and whose menu identifies the names of fish species based on DNA sequencing. The restaurant is owned by Jerry Greenberg, co-author of the magazine's article.
"The wrong labeling of seafood is a global problem, but by joining together we can do something," Cheng said. "I am excited to see how this partnership is developing."
Willette, Cheng, Barber and his colleagues reported in a January 2017 study on the DNA of fish commissioned at 26 sushi restaurants in Los Angeles from 2012 to 2015 that 47% of sushi had been mislabeled. DNA tests showed that the researchers received a different type of fish in 100% of cases, 43 orders of halibut and 32 orders of snapper. Previous studies have detected similar problems at the national and international levels, said Willette. However, halibut purchased in grocery stores and tested has shown a labeling accuracy of nearly 100%, Willette said.
"I think this seafood monitoring project will help reduce these labeling errors and that when we sample in a year, we will see improvements," Willette said.
He encourages more sushi restaurants to join the project.
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