restaurants serving lower-quality fish as high quality fish

[phantom power]

Great Depression 2.0 meets fishery collapse

The Globe collected fish from 134 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets from Leominster to Provincetown, and hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on the samples. Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name - 48 percent.

The results underscore the dramatic lack of oversight in the seafood business compared with other food industries such as meat and poultry. Nationally, mislabeled fish is estimated to cost diners and the industry up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group.

It happens for a range of reasons, from outright fraud to a chef’s ignorance to the sometimes real difficulty of discerning one fillet from another. But industry specialists say money is commonly the motivator: It’s a way to increase profits - a cheaper fish sold as something more pricey - on the assumption that customers will not detect the difference.

The Globe-sponsored DNA testing found 24 of the 26 red snapper samples were in fact other, less prized species, including fish collected at Minado restaurant in Natick, Teriyaki House in South Boston, and the now closed Big Papi’s Grille in Framingham, owned in part by Red Sox slugger David Ortiz.

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/10/23/on_the_menu_but_not_on_your_plate/?page=1

[defendandprotect]

1. kr

[poverlay]

2. Get used to it.. It takes an awful lot of level 2 & 3 fish to equal the level ones..n/t

[Uben]

3. It's not a mistake....

...they switch it on purpose to fuel profits. Everything is about profits. Just goes to show that if they can cheat, they will.
They'll do the same with beef, using lower quality beef and charging premium rates. That is why I will never order a steak at a restaurant, or expensive fish. There's a bout a 50% chance you will actually get what you ordered. I rarely eat out anymore. I can eat so much better at home for so much less. For the cost of a steak dinner at a restaurant where I'm likely to be disappointed, I can have a lobster tail and filet at home, cooked to perfection! So, why eat out?

Business owners cut corners everywhere they can to eke out a little more profit. Quality be damned, all hail the might dollar!