Lost in all the press generated by the Boston Globe 2-part series on species substitution at Boston-area restaurants and Oceania’s report on substitution at Boston-area grocery stores is a story from another large seafood-centric city – Seattle. The local NPR affiliate (KPLU 88.5) reports on the efforts of Washington state’s Fish and Wildlife police to look for mislabeled species at area food markets.
Budget cuts and other assigned duties certainly don’t allow this to be a full-time duty of the WDFW, but seeking out fraud goes a long way to stopping the cheaters. As Officer Olson states, “Quite honestly all this stuff, it's always about the money. It's always about the bottom line.”
If you want a “do-it-yourself” guide to finding cheaters, check out this fascinating link. Professor Erica Cline with the University of Washington-Tacoma has a “Catching Cheaters Salmon Market Substitution Project”, complete with instructor and student’s lab manuals. Now that's a useful science project.
