Seafood fraud is a worldwide conservation and culinary problem. Mislabeling fish directly impacts consumers as well as marine ecosystems. Seafood is the most traded global food commodity, so this issue touches all corners of the Earth.
What they’re eating—at least near Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean—is one of many species of rockfish such as yelloweye, copper, China, or bocaccio. A vernacular term for rockfish, according to the FDA fish list, is “Pacific red snapper.” Although true red snapper aren’t native or present on the West Coast, the FDA does accept rockfish to be sold on the market as “snapper.”


But true deception is selling hog bung disguised as calamari.

That’s right. Those crispy, slightly chewy rings dipped in lemon aioli could actually be pig butthole, not squid.
An extremely entertaining interview on This American Life reveals that some pork processing plants box up pig colon and label it as “imitation calamari.” The interviewers actually do a side-by-side taste test of squid versus bung, and the participants couldn’t even identify the true calamari.

Rebranding seafood makes certain species of fish more appealing to the masses, often in order to utilize untapped fisheries. In fact, rebranding can be a sustainable move, taking pressure off overfished populations and shifting consumer focus to more stable or underappreciated fisheries.

“White tuna” is a common occurrence on menus of cheap sushi establishments, but it’s not actually albacore—it’s escolar. This deep-sea fish (which is not a real tuna) also known as “butterfish,” “oilfish,” “waloo/walu,” “snake mackerel,” and jokingly, “ex-lax fish.”