Sushi-gate shocks sashimi noshers

Have purveyors of raw fish been playing sashimi-scoffing gourmands as fools?

The New York Times reports that an ingenious science project by a pair of New York City high-school students indicates there’s something mighty fishy going on at some sushi joints.

Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss went to four sushi restaurants and 10 grocery stores in Manhattan, and sent 60 samples to be genetically fingerprinted at the University of Guelph-based Fish Barcode of Life Initiative. When the test samples were compared to the known DNA fingerprints of almost 5,500 fish species, the results revealed that one-quarter of the fish samples with identifiable DNA had been mislabelled.

In what could be termed Sushi-gate, one piece of fish sold as white tuna was, in fact, cheap Mozambique tilapia; flying-fish roe turned out to be from smelt; and seven of nine samples of what was supposed to be red snapper were revealed to be anything but, from Atlantic cod to the endangered Acadian redfish.

Kind of makes you take a second look at the maki on your plate, now, doesn’t it?

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