The Scales Fall Away (From Our Eyes)?

A Guardian study has confirmed sea food fraud on a vast scale (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/15/revealed-seafood-happening-on-a-vast-global-scale). The study analysed items from 30 countries. DNA investigations were carried out on 9000 products from fishmongers, markets and restaurants. Restaurant meals were packaged/along with their menus, before being sent to the laboratory for analysis. A third of these restaurant courses contained mislabelled seafood. Overall, 36% of all items were falsely labelled. The amount of mislabelling varied from country to country. The highest incidence (55%) was seen in the UK and Canada. Often, cheaper varieties of seafood were substituted for prime selections. Sometimes, the 'replacements' were very different species. The extreme example were 'prawn balls' from Singapore. These, had no trace of prawn. They did, however, contain pork! The findings are very worrying, as we are repeatedly instructed to only buy and eat 'sustainable fishery products'. How can anyone really be certain what they are eating, if mislabelling is so rampant? And how can honest sellers make a profit, when they are so easily undercut? Seafood is very much the 'wild west' of culinary ingredients.