Seafood fraud: why you can’t always trust what’s on your plate

Cosmos Magazine

Cosmos

Cosmos is a quarterly science magazine. We aim to inspire curiosity in ‘The Science of Everything’ and make the world of science accessible to everyone.

By Cosmos

One in five fish caught every year is fished illegally or comes from unregulated sources.

If those numbers are hard to swallow, determining just how much illicit seafood enters Australian markets and winds up on your plate is even harder.

At the moment, the industry is reliant on digital and paper-based tracing to detect fraud. But thanks to new research, we now know a chemical signature that can tell us more about the origins of seafood.

On the latest episode of The Science Briefing Dr Sophie Calabretto talks to Cosmos Magazine journalist Ellen Phiddian about tackling seafood fraud and why there’s no guarantee that what’s on your plate is what the label says it is.

Huh? Science Explained is a LiSTNR production.

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