Your Seafood Is Not What You Think It Is | Outdoor Journal Radio ep. 147

Name: Your Seafood Is Not What You Think It Is | Outdoor Journal Radio ep. 147 | Open Video
Uploaded: 2024-12-02T18:48:11+00:00
Duration: 1 h 29 min 51 s

0:03
one out of five packages of seafood is misle one yeah so chances are real good
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that if you eat fish and purchase it uh at a retailer uh shelf chances are real
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good over the course of say a year that you've been eating something that was
0:23
not La correctly so we have these labels maybe it says it's salmon or it says
0:29
it's rainbow trout or it says it's tuna you as the consumer have some faith that
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what you're purchasing is in fact uh as represented on that label uh you are
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paying premium dollar for inferior product uh and that's just happening
0:45
across the board one of the health one of the health effects that we've seen certainly is are things like escalar or
0:51
butterfish being sold under the label white tuna oh es es escalar is a nasty
0:56
little fish um if you cook it right it's it it's pretty good uh but it produces
1:02
by weight something like 20% of its body weight is an indigestible fatty acid uh
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and it leads to um certain uh gastrointestinal distress if you eat
1:15
enough of it you know you could be you could land in the hospital really as consumers uh what can we do to safeguard
1:23
ourselves against this frul go catch your peckel and then cut it cut it up
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yourself there's you [Music] [Applause] [Music]
1:41
[Applause] help this episode of Outdoor Journal radio is brought to you in part by the
1:47
invasive species Center protecting Canada's land and water from invasive species Freedom Cruise Canada rent the
1:55
boat own the memories jmbb Cyca Marine your home for all things Power Sports
2:02
boats and equipment and sail the ultimate destination for your Outdoor
2:10
Adventures hey everybody how you doing I'm Angela B he's Peter Bowman we're ready to go can you tell I'm in a hurry
2:16
cuz I got to get to our first and only guest on this uh episode I'm really excited about you're never in a hurry
2:22
come on this one I'm in a hurry because I I originally heard about this story I don't know a couple decades ago we did a
2:28
show on uh the old Outdoor Journal radio program on The FAN 590 and and and and
2:34
and I was fascinated by the subject can you tease the the audience a little bit here would it shock you to know that one
2:43
out of five packages of fish that you're purchasing and or either purchasing at
2:50
the store uh to cook and consume on your own or getting it from a uh fast food
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store already prepared or like a sushi bar for example one out of five of the
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products that you're consuming is mislabeled o in other words
3:09
it's something that it ain't come on now a bunch of [ __ ] here's a statement for you your Snapper
3:16
is not a snapper no how's that oh my that that's it his truest statement as I get right there uh and so a little later
3:23
on we'll be joined by an expert in the field his name is Matthew Morris uh he's at the Ambrose University in Calgary and
3:31
they're doing uh a study on and and what they actually do is go out to these places and they undercover they sample
3:38
these products and then they take a DNA sampling of it and they'll tell you whether you're really buying a a Cod or
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you're buying a fraud that's basically fraud I like that I did that all on my
3:50
own that was organic that was as organic as it get whether you're buyna test that
3:56
test that to make sure you did that right cuz I don't know if that's organic or not uh that's coming up his name is Matthew Morris and uh he'll be joining
4:03
us to talk to us about this incredibly alarming study yeah it's it's not good
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it's not good on the other side of that coin by the way hello Dean Taylor how are you oh I'm good how are you uh
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lovely today with your red and black I wear this on almost every podcast I've noticed now I think it's my uniform
4:21
you're making it your uniform yeah all right um okay did I mention he's Peter
4:27
Bowen and I my my uh sh sh Tru lime sh Tru I'm going
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to talk about that in a moment that's lovely that's very that's a unique uh that's one those one ofs that you got to
4:38
keep from wearing it uh the lovely vula uh behind the camera as usual he's
4:44
particularly interested in today's subject matter yes absolutely because he wants to laugh at us he wants to sneer
4:51
at us he's saying see if you would be like me don't consume anything that walks and moves
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and you have to chase to eat and you won't have any of these problems with
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mislabeling uh Nick over here ell of course I already mentioned Dean over
5:10
there so in the meantime I mentioned uh this lovely shirt that you've got on no you will not find that if you go to
5:16
fishing Canada the store you will not find that shirt in fact this we had made
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up just for Mr Bowman cuz he is so special that we thought you know what he
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should have something nobody else has and that's why that exists today there's a bunch of
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[ __ ] no no it could have been true why do you like so there's only one of these so if I go around this place and I
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go all over I can find one more if I find one more then that's a bunch of [ __ ] there may be a couple of them
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but the problem is that they were made erroneously they were mislabeled mislabeled just like the fish that we're
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going to find out about this a tilapia this is Al actually a tilapia not a shirt that's right uh but if you do go
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there you'll see all the wonderful stuff that we have for you uh not mislabeled uh including all the Outdoor Journal uh
6:08
schwag and the wonderful fishing Canada stuff and new product that's just been
6:14
put up there you got to go and you got to check when is our when is our new new new stuff coming up that stuff we've
6:20
been working on and keeping secret and all that those new well it depends on when this airs Jesus this suppos to air
6:26
like be first week of December you think we'll be do you think we'll get this stuff for Christmas this new product
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well I I I'm I'm hoping oh nck oh fingers crossed okay Nick says fingers crossed got everything crossed over
6:37
there okay it's up to him I guess it's up to Nick oh boy we better crossboard our fingers
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then uh there there are some uh wonderful new products that will be yeah
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a little te they threw out there it's pretty some pretty cool stuff coming out folks well they're going to get my money for sure because I'm going to get one of
6:56
each one of each of them you already have one of each every not have I you got everything every time you come in
7:02
here you got something different on I do not he still hasn't wore the
7:07
hoodie on the screen yet no we do need a that that that would been requesting that and he did definitely needs that
7:14
are you sure I have that because quite honestly I don't recall having that Nick
7:19
is he got that or did you steal up from him see see I told you he owns
7:25
everything he owns a lot of stuff I had a conversation with Nick not that long long ago and he says yeah
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Grandpa he said to Matt and I come on over to the house and I got to get rid of a bunch of this stuff he says they just loaded boxes of your your hoodies
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and stuff from past sponsors it's like the Goodwill I love it you uh anyways
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moving on uh that's all happening at fishing canada.com the Gateway the
7:51
portal to your next fishing Adventure or shop. fishing canada.com you can do that come on now I prefer you go to Let's
7:58
mention a mo just to get go to the yeah uh listener feedback Mr Bowman uh ladybug oh sorry
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are we going to assume that this is a female or a male here's the name at ladybug
8:12
Adventures via YouTube so you could find that out very quickly probably the YouTube either the little profile
8:18
picture or maybe at ladybug Adventures has a story later on about a guy who yes
8:25
there's ladybugs mentioned in the yeah it's connected connect always connects these stories up but right now
8:31
connection conne you'll have to wait and tune in can you tell me what the connection with this image behind me is
8:37
she responded to this he or she responded to this episode ah uh okay so ladybug Adventures via YouTube at
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ladybug Adventures YouTube is in response to our discussion on mandatory barbless hooks it says here yeah that
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was like interspersed with all these interviews we went into a passionate discussion so why didn't you have an image of a barbless hook on here I
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thought that looked better cuz that's misleading though well no cuz if you're watching on YouTube right now you can
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probably tap somewhere on the screen here and you can get right to that video see the source I feel I misled you must
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not like that picture of you there something wrong with this picture look looks happy much like the story that
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we're about to talk about slap Scott Martin in the back of in the shoulder spack see this is mislabeling to me just
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like the fish stories that's coming up that's great image I like that clickbait look at all the people up there yeah
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it's clickbait this is what it's all about here bro at ladybug adventurers via YouTube uh says in response to our
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discussion on mandatory barless hooks episode 144 for those of you who are as confused as I am episod see that up
9:48
there episode 144 up top there she says she ladybug says ladybug says I use
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barbless for salmon rainbow steel head and carp with really good results I've
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pinched down some of my troubles on the crankbait and jerk baits also without losing fish that often uh so she says so
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he see she uh so much easier to release fish and untangle uh from anything I try
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to promote this but Ontario Anglers are so stubborn yeah we are I actually do
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agree I feel like Ontario Anglers are are the worst for this I agree 100% And I don't know why it's the only
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jurisdiction in this country that is really dragging its feet on this whole barbless hook issue I think it should be
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a no-brainer from the government because I honestly guys let's be honest a lot of
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people don't even know Barb hooks are a lot of Anglers it's not even talked about here in Ontario right so if you don't know what it is listening right
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now they're saying what the hell are you talking about are we going to make an assumption that at ladybug Adventures
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via YouTube um is not from Ontario or is from Ontario
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that's a great question I'm gonna I try
11:07
I not from here but lives here now ah and that's why she can H maybe poo poo
11:14
he she can poo poo on Ontario angler that makes sense they not from here good call Dean that's a good call yeah cuz
11:20
the the the ladybug would know the benefits and and is obviously used practically used it ladybug I I just you
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know if I if I have to say I would say is probably from western
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Canada that's what I'm thinking so ladybug if you're listening can you let us know uh at ladybug uh Adventures via
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you you want to know uh where or what sex am I right no I just want to know
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are we talking about a transplanted uh Alberton or BC or
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Saskatchewan native what is the problems with the most barous regulations what the most say BC BC's got to
11:59
and right is Al and let's not for isn't Manitoba barous part part of thato no no
12:06
Newland definitely is barbarous I think the whole province is barbarous lots of
12:12
New Brunswick Nova Scotia too right yeah they're they're definitely there I think ourselves and maybe Quebec are are the
12:18
only two areas left where we really don't have a firm policy on it at all we
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talk about it right we often say well you know what we should go Bess but at the end of the day and and and and him
12:29
and I are guilty of this we talk about it here we use this you know we get up on our soap box and and we preach from
12:36
the pulpit but at the end of the day let me tell you right now you're more of a preacher in that one I'll give you the
12:42
the Kudos on that one because I don't really talk you don't even want to discuss
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bar I just if I got barbs I might as well use them right you got the things
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put barbs on a hook so might as well keep them on there when I get that six lb small moou and he's jum put 16 times
13:00
on that jerk bait on that said jerk bait oh no no no please stick in there stay
13:05
in there uh did you mention conservation is that why we were talking baress hooks because it it could help preserve some
13:11
of the species Sports species that we so much love H you know what it would yeah it's a very it does facilitate an easier
13:19
release for sure you know I will say that at times there's other times it doesn't but it does sometimes help
13:26
because this is the time that we uh talk about an invasive species that is
13:32
possibly uh putting some of our favorite sportfish in Peril would it be the grass carp is that your well I'm talking about
13:38
the invasive species Center oh and um Asian
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[Music]
13:53
carp.com is that right Dean that is right that's right uh the grass carp one
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of four uh members of the Asian carp family and it uh it is a consumer of
14:09
aquatic plant and along with you mentioned something on the last episode that was actually an error but I know
14:16
how you were saying it so I will take this opportunity to fix that now Peter
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mentioned that do they consume vegetation but that they also consumed
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uh micro PL z z Plankton which was totally wrong however he's right because
14:34
those creatures also depend heavily on vegetation so when they open the filter
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feeding they not get they're not filter feeders they don't do that at all no no no not any of the Asian carb maybe one
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by accident in its lifetime may have choked on some uh I think they all I
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mean anything that opens their mouth in the under the water gets zank in right I'm assuming when when a b let's go with
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that but in fact in case in case any of you picked it up uh last episode no they
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they they do consume vegetation only but in that vegetation of course is all of these tiny little Zoo Plank and
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invertebrates type of thing that other fish they're not like a whale they're not like a filter like that no they're
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not we could you know say they are but that would be I don't want to mislead anybody I want to be accurate in the
15:22
messaging on this program as the audience probably knows it I'm all about uh I I'm not about labeling things like
15:30
we'll talk about later on in the program true true that true that I like that the good news of this whole story is that
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there are currently no established breeding populations of this Critter this grass carp in the great lakes or
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any other Canadian Waters they have they have DNA sampling they've shown up a
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little bit that's correct here and there that's right not many but they're they have shown up so what we need to do uh
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all of us need to get on the bandwagon and we need to arm ourselves with knowledge that it takes to identify this
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fish and also to know what to do if and when we in the eventuality and it's
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going to happen that we will all start encountering them in the wild I hate the way you say that it's going to happen I
16:12
me it's inevitable yeah absolutely if if they're already here I mean it's inevitable that it's going to happen
16:18
right do you think that there'll be more Asian carp in the Great Lakes than Atlantic salmon at sometime you think
16:24
that's going to happen well that would not be a tough one to I'm just asking bet I'm just that's good yeah I would
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say they stand a pretty good chance okay I would say the race is on right well yeah I thought you were going to say
16:36
would there be any chance of there being more uh grass carp than common carp now
16:41
that would be a scary thought you that won't happen because because they'll devastate everything if there's that
16:48
many numbers then it'll be so it'll be everything will be decimated and then the the common carp will be done to and
16:53
everything else yeah the Cara carp not survive that there's that many Asian in
16:59
the great legs we are toast toast wow that's a scary thought anyways I urge
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everybody to go to um Asian car.can carp.com all the information
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there uh mostly it stuff that'll help you identify the fish but also what to do in the event that you do encounter
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one of these Critters in the wild and uh be on the lookout be we need to be vigilante about this there's no ifs ands
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or butts this is the one time you can be a vigilante like that I like that too uh what's in the news Mr Bowman well this
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is a weird one uh that our crack research team has pulled up but the the
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uh the world renowned is that world renowned yeah I
17:44
guess he's the biggest uh rap rap star U
17:49
named Aubrey Graham oh AKA Drake oh Drake okay I've
17:54
heard I I was going to say that's not the story I got in front of me but all right dawned on one of an American fly
18:00
fishing magazine he made the cover of the American fly fishing an American fly fishing magazine how's how's how's that
18:06
I I Really they have him fly fishing the the best part about this whole thing should I be asking Dean by the way or we
18:12
could ask Dean this for sure yeah this is kind of out of what we would normally talk about but this was in like National
18:18
or like like mainstream news everywhere people talking about this Drake of course and the Fly Fishing Community was
18:25
not happy about this oh like there's a lot of push back remember we talking about ladybug he was the on the cover apparently he's dressed in ladybug his
18:32
outfit and the cover are there what the hell is that the Drake Look at that so
18:38
the Magazine's called the Drake um boy does he ever look like a fly fisherman there yeah that's this is the issue I'm
18:44
having with it we have a hard enough time anyways we don't need uh we don't need him on there but okay well tell me
18:50
about it what's he doing was this a publicity this is just a publicity s for the magazine to get some traction which I mean he has millions and millions of
18:57
followers and he repost posted it saying that he's now into this um so they basically just staged him there was even
19:04
that's even a horrible picture the setting the whole night is horrible to ask you a question
19:10
okay is there any chance that we can get the um I'm going to call the publicity
19:18
agent or whoever was in charge of putting this together Y and getting
19:23
Drake to appear on this magazine whoever that person is I would like to hire him
19:29
and bring him on to this show because my question is why the hell don't we have Drake doing that kind of crap here on
19:35
this show cuz we're not called the Drake also bad title if someone had the name Outdoor Journal we could get them on oh
19:43
OJ this look for some star with odj as the uh as their initials then we can get
19:48
them on CU that's no but why why would Drake even do that that's the that's the question that is the question of all
19:54
question this ladybug coat outfit that he has on is a Nike product maybe they wanted him to go promote the ladybug
20:00
coat no that's a real that's a real product I mean yeah everything in the
20:05
magazine him in this ladybug Hood set up here that can't be a real product that people would actually go out and spend
20:11
their harder money buying one actually for the next uh for next year he's going to be on camera with that the
20:18
ladybug we're going to call him the lady Bugger I love it I wonder if is the color off too CU
20:26
it should be red shouldn't it is ladybugs red Ru are those orange ones invasive
20:32
those are the those are not ladybugs right they're invasive it's a imitation he's an imitation of what he's his envir
20:38
well he's an imitation of Drake right the Drake versus Drake and versus the isn't there a fly with the any mayfly
20:46
they call it Drake Drake mayfly there you go yeah and then the feathers use feathers from Drake Birds to TI your
20:52
flies is that possible in that's how the term started it's all Drake bud it's all about the Drake
21:00
all righty let's get on with this program show is there anything more about this story that we need to know or
21:05
we Wast way overboard on that sucker enough of our valuable time here first of all I'm not interested in uh Drake
21:13
nor am I interested in in fly fishing magazine how about rap music you you go Dad that to the make it a threesome a
21:20
perfect [Music] threesome I am interested though in uh
21:25
the folks at fishfindermounts.com because this is the fan question of the week
21:30
brought to you by said fishfindermounts.com that's fishfindermounts.com you know if you are
21:37
uh an affectionado of electronics and Technology on your boat and you have not
21:43
gone to this website I don't even know I don't even know uh how you can be in the in the
21:50
fish finding um business yeah you got to check it you have to check it you have to check it
21:56
out it's called fishfindermounts.com they have everything that you could ever want to mount use
22:03
operate uh technology on your boat it's not just limited to Liv scope it's not
22:10
just limited to uh any of these other products that we talk about uh from
22:15
Garmin for example on a regular basis they have mounts for any uh brand and or
22:21
size Andor shape of electronics oh yeah and they make and they make using those
22:27
Electronics an absolute we need to send them we need to send them some video or something we've done some pieces this year that are coming up on our show so
22:33
after that we should and they could put it in their site somewhere embedded in their sight somewhere you know there my favorite piece right there yeah you do
22:40
like that one don't you oh my God oh my God that's a Dandy so you just pull and push and that thing twists and turns and
22:47
then the handle up top you turn it and it changes direction of the transducer I'm telling you it's it's just
22:54
unbelievable that is a convenient unit I have to say that is a buddy of mine U
23:01
he's got I don't know where he got got it obviously from one of our programs and or someplace an overhead view of our
23:08
boat from this past season and he called he say what the hell are you guys doing are you Electro shocking those fish now
23:16
he say that's not even legal when he saw all this stuff on the boat I love it yeah you look at that you see that all
23:22
above and all the gear we got hanging off yeah I could see that uh anyways fade question of the week brought to you
23:27
by fish find mounts.com that's fishfindermounts.com all one word of course uh is submitted
23:34
by Simon from Ontario via email but you can access it through many different ways Mr yeah email address is info@
23:41
fishing canada.com or Facebook or Instagram I'm sure they could find out if there was somehow a YouTuber that you
23:48
know they have a YouTube uh feedback we could throw it through that even if we had to so doesn't matter but this is
23:53
from Simon uh any advice it's a it's a good one it's it's different for sure but any advice for people who live in an
24:00
area where there are minimal lakes and rivers around what's stay what's ways to
24:05
stay motivated how do they stay motivated when they don't have a whole lot of opportunities close by that's a
24:11
tough one right that is a great question yeah I mean the obviously the obvious one is you maybe
24:18
invest in some specialty channels like Sportsman Channel Canada wfn you could have some T Extra TV stuff to do it and
24:25
obviously you know staying in that vein you're YouTube and all that kind of stuff so it
24:31
keeps you interested in that sense but um you know I I'm I'm I'm just trying to
24:36
think I'm trying to think of some place that we have been to that does not have
24:44
some kind of flowing water yeah in Canada you'd be hard pressed to find
24:50
where would you find something like maybe Northern Alberta maybe I'm think Saskatchewan probably there's probably some areas in Saskatchewan where there's
24:56
not a lot of down at the bottom CU I know in the northern of provin it's all water so
25:03
maybe yeah maybe the Prairies but I know in you go like Quebec Ontario Manitoba
25:09
it's unreal the Mari times I mean we just came from the Mari times few weeks ago you couldn't drive more than 5
25:14
minutes without seeing water yeah but anyways I guess it's a legitimate question but I just wow how to stay
25:21
motivated like ways to stay motivated you want to fish listen to The Outdoor Journal radio uh podcast regular basis
25:30
we do talk about fishing we're going to talk about fish coming up later little later on here today too but we do talk
25:36
about fishing I I think the best way to stay motivated to be honest with you is watch the fishing shows man that's what
25:42
I said earlier yeah and I mean it depends on how far away too like to us to me let's just say the norm
25:50
I I my normal drive on a weekend fishing is an hour and a half drive that's I've CH and I got closer than that around I
25:56
choose to go north and I go east a lot cuz you don't like skoog that's why well skoo but I got Rice Lake right there
26:03
which is really close and I'm going to make a point of trying to fish a little more and more but I just I like the the
26:08
whole dyve process and everything like that so if it's but if it's two or three hours then I can say there's a that's a
26:14
lot maybe Simon doesn't drive right right right maybe Simon um is is a
26:20
youngster that doesn't drive or maybe somebody uh a little more advanced in life that doesn't drive so let's let's
26:26
can't trailer a boat can't do that stuff so there's only bank fishing and there's all kinds of well if you have the
26:32
internet which you must have because you sent uh this via info fishing canada.com so you have access to the internet I
26:38
would suggest that uh you go to I don't know maybe there's 10,000 fishing videos
26:46
available at any given time on YouTube there's a lot um and try and I know for
26:52
you know it's funny it's it's you say that because I talk to a lot of people mostly middleages adults who say that
27:00
Saturday mornings it's a ritual Saturday mornings from 7:00 till whatever time
27:06
they they they they have to stop all they do is watch fishing shows and that's how they get their fix so you
27:14
know maybe that's uh I don't know I don't know all I'm saying is it's it's it's if if sometimes
27:21
when you have no other Alternatives that's the way you have to go and by the way everybody uh we got to remember uh
27:27
one of our sponsors sale uh home for all things fishing including rods tackle clothing and much more head over to sale
27:33
uh the store or to sale.ca save up to 60% uh usually uh they're they're
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sending constant emails to us that are save save save save so there always stuff on SP what a perfect time of year
27:45
to be oh my God going through either the website or a store uh they have everything that you could possibly
27:51
imagine you're going to be bundling up very soon so if you're listening to the this podcast as it's released in nov is
27:58
so you're going to want to be bundling up and they do carry a great line of clothing there so uh that Sale s a i l
28:05
and if you don't have one in your neighborhood which is quite likely uh go to sale.ca that's
28:11
sale.ca and I believe right now I could be wrong uh you could get up to 60% off
28:17
on some select items there you go you was right uh one thing they do not sell is fresh fish and that's what we're they
28:24
s the gear that you can catch fresh or fresh fish Avid all these problems catch your old fish uh joining us now from
28:31
Ambrose University in Calgary is Matthew Morris who's been doing an interesting study uh he's a biologist that's
28:38
interested in ecology and the evolution of fish my kind of guy our kind of guy right there for sure we originally broke
28:45
uh this type of story more on a national level several years ago on uh The Outdoor Journal
28:52
radio show on The FAN 590 and it was shocking at the time we had a subsequent to program came up uh
29:00
about a year later it was shocking to all of us that consume fish on a regular basis that in fact a lot of the
29:07
labeling that we trust and care about when we're reading a package may not be
29:13
as it stated and to help us through that uh Matthew thank you for joining us it's
29:19
a pleasure to be here today thank you so much for having me our pleasure how long you been working on this by the way oh
29:25
man so I mean this started back in my undergrad in a molecular ecology class at dely uh so that's coming on 20 years
29:33
ago now we we did some of this and I yes that was it I brought it with me to Calgary uh so since 2014 we've been
29:41
sampling uh various markets in Calgary and looking for evidence and mislabeling and it turns out it's it it wasn't hard
29:46
to find it it was shocking so then I'm going to make an assumption because back then it would have been between 15 and
29:53
20 years ago that we first broke the story back then we all assume that this
29:59
was just a temporary little glitch in the global system of packaging fresh
30:04
fish clearly if it's still going on today it wasn't a little blip so nothing
30:09
has happened since that that's what I was going to say if you guys if you did an interview 10 years ago he's been at it for this long and it's still
30:16
happening as we're going to find out from Matthew here in a second that obviously somebody is not taking care of
30:21
business here properly right so a big Global problem and it is big
30:28
bucks yeah there's there's still charges being leveled in the last year or so big charges out of um Mississippi you know
30:35
there's a a company in BC that was charged for bringing critically endangered European eel uh into Canada
30:41
was that two three years ago now so yeah know this is an ongoing concern for sure
30:46
so first of all before we get into the the ins and outs of it just give us um a
30:52
bird's ey view of what exactly are we talking about here when we when we say mislabeling of fresh
30:59
fish yeah so we're talking about um having labels on your food that is uh
31:06
accurate right so that the consumer knows exactly what they're purchasing so we have these labels maybe it says it's
31:13
salmon or it says it's rainbow trout or it says it's tuna you as the consumer
31:18
have some faith that what you're purchasing is in fact uh as represented on that label so the Canadian food
31:25
inspection agency has a series of um regulations to ensure that consumers
31:30
aren't uh Hoodwinked as it were right so you you bought what you got right um so
31:37
they run What's called the fish list and that fish list contains all the different species of marine and
31:42
freshwater fish that are legally sold in Canada and all the varied names that they can legally have so you guys are in
31:51
Ontario right so you talk about walleye all the time um I'm out here in Alberta
31:57
took me a to understand when people are talking about pick roll out here that they're actually talking about walleye
32:04
right that by the way is not the misleading we're talking about no no no no no no no so the Canadian food
32:09
inspection agency recognizes that you look to their fish list and walleye and pickerel are both legally acceptable
32:16
terms for walleye when you're at the grocery store so so let's talk about
32:21
that fish first of all because and the only reason I say that is because of U
32:27
I'd say over the last couple of months for the first time in my life I've actually been purchasing walleye at the
32:34
store I wanted to try it I I said let me I got to try it if if if it doesn't taste good then then I'll I'll go back
32:41
to just using Walley that we catch and and take home so I've been trying it and I got to tell you it's been it's been
32:48
really good now the the advantage to me doing it and most people probably listening to this program right now is
32:55
that we can identify a Walley fet from a Cod or or a tilapia or some of the other
33:02
fish that are on the market so we can look at it and we can say that that's definitely a look we've fated enough of
33:09
them in our life that we know exactly exactly what they look like but the general public would not be in that
33:15
position and that's what's worrisome here is that do you when you buy a s interrupt is there skin on no no so skin
33:23
but it's still very identifi I know but that's one way they can unidentify a fish easier to you and me but to the
33:29
average person who doesn't fish doesn't what's the difference even a scaled Walley we could tell it was a Walley
33:34
skin pretty much can tell but wow interesting this is the issue right is
33:40
that um you're buying these products usually not head-on fish they they often
33:46
have been stripped of a lot of their identifying features and so you kind of just trust that this thing at the sushi
33:51
store they're calling it Snapper you're trusting it's some kind of Snapper but
33:57
actually you're caia and you have no idea that you've just bought a cheap product a bu that's a bunch of [ __ ]
34:04
they're giving a Dean once again once again I have to go back to what I just
34:09
said some of us and I'm assuming most of us listening to this program could probably identify tilapia versus Cod but
34:19
the general public at large has no idea oh God no so without a doubt so then let's take it let's go back to the to
34:27
the very start of the process so so let's say that we're talking tilapia uh wherever it's farmed whether
34:34
it's coming out of Mexico or South America or wherever the product is coming from we always assumed until the
34:42
story broke some 15 plus years ago that on location wherever that tilapia Farm
34:49
is is that we have an inspection system in place when the packaging is done that
34:56
somebody some somebody who has the authority to certify a product is there
35:02
looking at it and says yeah this is tilapia came from that body of water it's skin now and I see it in the
35:07
package okay stamp yeah certified that's the lapia send it up to Canada that's not the
35:14
case not entirely could be because the guys are receiving it could then mislabel it
35:19
could they not the people that are buying it they buy it a nice cheap tilapia price and then they say okay let's put this at a snapper price now I
35:25
don't know because if I remember the story correctly a lot of this labeling was being done right at the source
35:32
especially ocean fish that are processed right on the water in those big processing uh ships that catch and and
35:39
and clean package freeze and ship to to Distributors that's where at the time
35:46
most of the problem was was occurring is on those big packaging ships um yeah so
35:52
they they've certainly looked into this to try to figure out where where's the mislabeling occurring so part of the
35:58
problem is just the vast International scope of Fisheries right you get a tuna
36:03
down in the South Pacific uh and it's going to go through numerous countries before it ever makes it to Table in
36:09
Canada and each of those countries could have completely different labeling laws and so part of the issue could simply be
36:16
that it was labeled in one place according to those regulations and then it was brought to Canada where the the
36:22
labeling laws are different and it didn't get caught in the process um but it could also be perfectly illegal uh
36:30
intentional fraud we have all those issues and we know they it's happening everywhere from the point of land like
36:35
where the fish are being caught to where they're landing at the shore to where they're being processed to the warehouse
36:42
to the grocery store we're finding it everywhere along that system one of the alarming things about this when it first
36:49
broke because my thing was well okay so have you and your your group has found some mislabeled product so you should be
36:55
able to follow it back and go through the whole process and find out exactly who mislabeled it when and where but
37:03
that's not the case is it that's not the case there's no way to track where this food is coming from where this fish is
37:10
coming from and that's the biggest problem of all yeah Canada's recently um tightened some of its traceability
37:17
regulation so they now require that um where a fish lands there needs to be records of where it came One Step before
37:24
and where it's going one step after but that's currently it for our traceability
37:29
regulations the dream is to have a sort of boat totable traceability where that
37:34
fish gets um like an an RFID tag and that passes through various checkpoints
37:41
and they scan it and then eventually gets a little QR code and when it gets to your table you scan the QR code and
37:47
you can see exactly where it's been well I mean we laugh but you know some of the
37:52
other sources of protein it's exactly what happens you know in the meat industry poultry pork it's pretty highly
37:59
regulated right from the the time it's it's harvested to the time it hits your table but fish which we all assumed
38:07
would be is not Matthew you said to the grocery store has there ever been any uh
38:13
grocery stores that have been proven to be doing this themselves and it finally gets to that point the grocery store is
38:19
has that ever been proven uh I I'm not aware of any grocery stores in Canada that have been slapped with any sort of
38:27
uh lock suit okay um a lot of the time it's happening with the Distributors the the ones who are selling it to those
38:33
vendors like this happened I think I just mentioned in Mississippi recently um a decades long uh case involving
38:41
intentional fraud where they were passing off fish as locally caught uh and and they and they weren't and so the
38:48
the restaurants there and the distributor were both um f substantially
38:53
but in Canada I'm not aware of any major grocery market chain well I'll tell you
38:58
the the walleye that I've been or Piel for some of you that I've been eating recently that I'm purchasing at a retail
39:05
uh operation it's catfish well no it's Walley but but there is an interesting
39:11
stamp on it and it says wild cot and and yeah and and I would think that even
39:18
that because you know I mean we all love the the notion that we're we're consuming wild food that's harvested in
39:26
the wild and it's not uh raised inappropriately and it's not you know it doesn't have chemicals enhancing its
39:33
growth and all that so when we see Wild on a package like we get all excited right how bad is that uh uh misleading
39:41
little piece of information yeah every every time there's a label there's the opportunity for uh for fraud right wow
39:50
um and the problem is that especially with with labels like wild or or Farm do you see that for salmon a lot wild
39:56
caught salmon versus Farm salmon they're genetically uh indistinguishable so we
40:01
have to use genetic markers often especially when it's a fle right when it's identifying features of been strip
40:07
we have to use genetic markers to figure out what um the species is so we use what's called a DNA barcode uh which is
40:14
this this region of DNA that's been determined to um sort of mutate at a at a certain rate it's not so this Gene
40:21
isn't so important that all species are virtually identical at this Gene any mutation would just sort of kill you
40:27
because it's so vital for life but nor is it so nonvital that everyone is
40:32
completely different from everybody else the any mutation just sort of accumulate so it's in that sort of goldilock sweet spot where you can extract this this bit
40:40
of DNA and sequence it and uh and determine the exact species but farmed
40:45
and wild are so uh s they're so closely related right that this this particular
40:52
marker is is not um it's not suitable to determine if that salmon is farmed or not you figure out if it's Atlantic
40:58
salmon or if it's scky salmon using this marker but you can't figure out if it's farmed or wild Atlantic salmon so in the
41:05
DNA of of a fish this might be I mean I'm this might be the dumbest question ever but a wild salmon would be eating
41:13
wild food and a farm salmon I'm assuming you eat pallets and stuff like that so
41:18
the DNA would never show something like that in in the markering no no that's not uh the the utility of DNA
41:25
unfortunately you can use other things things like stable isotope analysis you can look at um the the sort of markers
41:33
from the foods that they eat and how they gets incorporated into the tissue okay so that could be a particular but it's it's expensive um and not nearly as
41:42
as straightforward as doing some sort of basic DNA barcoding so DNA Bar coding is kind of the standard for identifying uh
41:48
fish fraud but it's not great in certain situations like farmed and wild so not really sure the extent to which um
41:56
consum are being ripped off with those particular labels how hopefully not much how do they how do you do bark or how do
42:03
you DNA test a fish in in layman's terms yeah well you take the tissue and then
42:09
typically it goes into a little stabilizing solution where the DNA is all nice and happy um and then you have
42:15
to break open the cell right because DNA is trapped inside of these little membranes of of of of fat so the cell
42:23
membrane and then the nuclear membrane so you have to break that all open get rid of all the contaminants um there's
42:29
another molecule kind of like DNA called RNA that you have to get rid of as well
42:35
um and then basically you have all this DNA it's giant amounts of DNA in every
42:40
single cell right like humans every one of our cells has six billion little letters of DNA in it so you need to
42:47
Target your one specific region so we do that with these little um they're called
42:52
primers they're little bits of DNA that find your Gene of interest and bind to it and then they can start building off
42:59
of it DNA is double stranded um and each strand is a complement so if you know if there's an letter A here then there's a
43:05
letter T here so what you do is you separate the DNA stick your little primer on and then it starts laying the
43:11
complement to what's on this Strand and then once you have a lot of that you can run it through a
43:17
essentially a DNA sequencer uh that can tell you the exact letters of that little region you've just targeted so
43:24
for us it's about 500 letters long this uh d DNA bar code series of a c's T's and G's and it gives you the resolution
43:31
you need to determine many species it's not great for tuna it can sort of get
43:36
you down to a few tuna but it can't give you the exact species of tuna under most circumstances but it's really good for
43:43
salmon it's good for Snapper it's good for COD you can tell Atlantic from Pacific Cod uh with this marker wow and
43:50
so with all of that technology um yourself along with the Mount Royal
43:55
University and university of Calgary have determined that roughly one out of
44:02
five packages of fish in Calgary and we're making assumptions that that is
44:08
widespread because we know it is one out of five packages of seafood is
44:14
mislabeled one so chances are real good that if you eat fish and purchase it uh
44:21
at a retailer uh shelf chances are real good over the course of say a year that
44:27
you've been eating something that was not as labeled
44:32
correctly yeah that's exactly right and and our study was the first of its kind for for a prairie region we weren't sure
44:40
sort of what to expect for a place that's far from the ocean uh would we be in line with with mislabeling rates in
44:46
Vancouver or Halifax and turns out we were right in line if not a little bit lower than what we find in coastal
44:52
cities um and ours was the first of its kind to study invertebrates in any real way in Canada uh so we found one in five
45:00
both for invertebrates that's your shellfish right your prawns and shrimp and oysters and octopus and one in five
45:08
for finfish one in five see that's that's hard the obvious uh reason for
45:15
doing this uh is financial uh gain because we mentioned the wild cot versus
45:21
the farm fish has a perception that it's more valuable it it it it you can consume it more readily you can pay a
45:29
little more for it because after all it's wild caught and why wouldn't you spend a couple of more bucks so I can
45:35
understand that part but some of the stuff I don't quite
45:40
understand why they would be labeling it something that it wasn't so maybe you
45:47
can shed some light on that what's the reason maybe just uh they have a higher supply of this
45:53
fish and they have a higher demand of this fish so hell we'll just turn this
45:59
fish into that fish is that kind of as simple as that oh yeah there there's certainly a couple different reasons and
46:05
and one is definitely financial gain that's just across the Spectrum in Canada and around the world one of the
46:11
leading drivers of this is is simply um financial gain you're you're just being ripped off this is why virtually
46:19
anywhere from like 95 to 100% of Snapper depending on the study it's just not uh
46:25
it's not Snapper it's not it's either um tilapia in the majority of cases so
46:30
that seems to be intentional fraud tilapia being a relatively cheap aquaculture freshwater fish right you
46:37
pack these things into into tanks because they're they can tolerate low oxygen herbivores right um and
46:44
substitute that out for a wild Marine carnivorous fish you're paying top
46:49
dollar for uh a pretty cheap uh product right um sometimes though it's just
46:55
because the the vendor doesn't really know what they're doing some of the Rockfish it's still
47:02
it's a type of Rockfish or it's a type of Snapper it's just not the kind that can be sold as red snapper there's so
47:07
many different species of Snapper and Rockfish and even for the expert they can be bewildering so you you get
47:14
something that's it's got a label on it for Snappers let's just sell that as red snapper right they don't think anything
47:21
of it so some some of it's pure you know accident and and actually there you know there's the occasional uh time where
47:27
it's actually the the vendor who's getting ripped off they're selling something for for cheap when they when they shouldn't because they just didn't
47:33
understand what they were what they actually had right um and sometimes it
47:38
it has to do with as I said these International labeling regulations what one of the things we're finding in
47:44
Calgary uh and I wasn't aware of this until we started looking out here is that a lot of our salmon if it's sold as
47:50
salmon it's supposed to be Atlantic salmon that's the only thing salmon can be according to the cfia if it's Sakai
47:56
salmon it has to be labeled as such any Pacific salmon needs to be given a designator salmon has to be Atlantic
48:02
salmon oh oh interesting there we go again with the Atlantic right
48:08
yeah but in Calgary a bunch of our Atlantic salmon are actually rainbow trout wow which is totally bizarre like
48:15
you've cut open your fair share of rainbows they they don't look like Atlantic salmon on the inside all but to
48:22
to most people like I said before they wouldn't know the difference and and and terms of table Fair it's probably as
48:30
good if not in some cases even better they'd have to sell it um staked or
48:35
filleted obviously right they' have to do that's right and they're they're manipulating the diet so that they take
48:42
on that orange right exactly right so you feed them the carotenoids that'll
48:48
change their their flesh that color so this happened in China big big issue most of their salmon being sold in China
48:54
was rainbow tro so the government response was to Simply change the legal name for salmon so now they can legally
49:01
be sold as rainbow trout in China and then if they're doing a lot of rainbow Tru aquaculture that's getting imported
49:07
into Canada with that salmon label so in cases like that I'm not sure that that's
49:12
um intentional melant that's one of those issues of sort of countries getting their wires crossed over over
49:19
labels and just not really checking but it's certainly ending up um in our stores and on our plates if if they're
49:26
doing that are there any potential health hazards coming down the road I
49:31
mean can if if if mislabeling is happening just um because of value and
49:40
uh quantity the abundance of a particular stock is it possible that
49:45
fish that are tainted or or or maybe past best before dates are mislabeled as
49:54
well um yeah I'm not sure about those being passed with best before
49:59
dates definitely fish that are less marketable will get sold as as uh under
50:06
a more pleasing name so one of the health one of the health effects that we've seen certainly is are things like
50:11
escalar or butterfish being sold under the label white tuna um white tuna is
50:17
not a legal name for anything in Canada but uh you often see that as a sort of designator for certain species of tuna
50:23
so you buy the we had a student go to and all you can eat sushi restaurant and purchase uh what was called white tuna
50:30
and it came out as as escalar butterish called oil fish oh es es escalar is a
50:36
nasty little fish um if you cook it right it's it's pretty good uh but it
50:42
produces by weight something like 20% of its body weight is an indigestible fatty
50:47
acid uh and it leads to um uh certain uh
50:53
gastrointestinal distress if you eat enough of it you know you could be you land in the hospital
50:59
really and it was raw when he bought like you got the sushi it was raw or was it cooked oh yeah good question I'm not
51:06
sure about about uh it was just a sushi fillet so however they process that it
51:11
doesn't really matter in that case yeah because this this fatty acid is definitely um so it leads to something
51:18
I'm gonna get the name wrong here so I I wrote it down Korea it's like the this
51:24
form of diarrhea that you get from this particular particular fish because you're just like dumping literally wax
51:30
out of your body right you get heart palpitations and all sorts of funky things that can happen here right so if
51:37
you if somebody has a ton of this fish and they're having a hard time getting rid of it perhaps one of the solutions
51:42
is to sell it as white tuna but we're not entirely sure why uh this is a fairly common phenomenon in Calgary and
51:49
we know of it all over North America how um how what do you do to to test uh we
51:57
know how you test for DNA but in terms of getting your samples are you just going to these grocery stores and and
52:03
buying them off the shelf yeah we're we're sending we sent our undergrads and and graduate students from our three
52:09
different institutions just said go on out we gave them these little vials that
52:14
preserve the the tissue um and in some cases depending on on the year we could
52:21
give them a little bit of money to to help offset cost uh and just go go have some sushi with your friends and grab a
52:27
bit of it about the size of a kidney bean and and stick it into the vial take a picture of the samples take a picture
52:34
of the label take a picture of the sample in the vial right so you got that sort of tracking of of the sample um and
52:40
then send it back and so that's what that's what they did and uh it's just shocking how easy it was for them to
52:47
find examples of mislabeled products in Calgary and not just like rainbow trout being sold to Salmon or your classic
52:54
Snapper but like really weird things like this this uh uh deep sea eel a
53:00
punctuated snake eel was being sold on the Calgary Market as I think it was called saltwater seawater eel so you
53:08
assume it's American eel and it absolutely was not it's a species not on the cfia fish list at all for sale in
53:14
Calgary and they weren't even trying right it's it's not like there was this giant robust sampling design they just
53:20
went out into the markets and just grabbed what was available and there's this weird weird species right there
53:27
right J wow that's I was going to ask you when you were talking was it Escala
53:32
is that the one the name you said yeah is there any Market in the world for eating escal off oh yeah yeah so as
53:40
toxic as it can be then there's a way of eating it or preparing it or selling it or something there there is a way and you can find blogs on how to how to
53:47
prepare it without doing too much damage to yourself I think moderation is a is key for that particular species right
53:54
and just sort of be be prepared for possible consequ quences how about um how about fish that
54:00
are protected and on the endangered species list for example one that comes
54:05
to mind is uh orange ruffy which used to be very popular and then all of a sudden
54:11
it was deemed to be in Peril and it sort of went off the market are there maybe
54:17
uh some intentional frauds being committed there with Chile and seab bass is
54:23
another one that comes to mind that if we label it something else we can still
54:30
sell it but we're illegally catching a fish that's on the do not catch list
54:35
that would be a concern as well right yeah conservation's definitely a big issue with with fish mislabeling um and
54:42
we found particularly in our invertebrates some some crab that were a
54:47
protected species of fish and so these are crab you don't get the claws and stuff on it I mean you're aware of
54:53
artificial crab that's actually fish right so yeah we definitely had that no Chilean Seabass or orange ruffy
54:59
thankfully but but still some species that um sort of eyebrow raising that are
55:05
uh globally listed by the iucn the international uh geez let me get this
55:11
right International Union for the conservation of nature it is a species of that are vulnerable or
55:16
endangered definitely found on the Calgary Market um now some of it is
55:22
there were examples of Atlantic Cod which as you you guys are aware are not doing terribly well uh they're being
55:29
sold as Pacific Cod which are doing substantially better so you as the consumer you're trying to make an informed decision here um you got these
55:36
two labels in front of you which one I'm going to buy well let's go for the Pacific Cod that are being better managed uh and then he ended up eating
55:43
an Atlantic Cod anyways so this this definitely happened in our case so it so
55:48
so just getting back to the Atlantic C from so you're saying that there is a viable uh industry going on the east
55:57
coast of North America catching Atlantic Cod M and packaging it as Pacific Cod so
56:06
that the consumer is not aware that they're actually eating a fish that you know has been on the uh do not fish
56:13
somebody's doing that might not be there but somebody's doing that along the line they're catching but see to me like I
56:19
listen to that and I said well how the hell did they get away with it I mean we've got so many rules and regulations
56:25
and so many levels of management in our food uh industry how the hell do you
56:31
catch an Atlantic Cod and then package it as a Pacific somebody who's buy the
56:38
first let's call it distributor the distributor who first gets that product
56:43
the are you saying that they have absolutely no
56:49
awareness that this could be an Atlantic Cod versus I mean they have to know the
56:55
differences yeah it's really it's really challenging to know in every particular case where is
57:01
this happening and and for what reason so we can speculate particularly in the tilapia Snapper situation right with
57:07
with Cod there's legal ambiguity in what Cod can be named so you can call
57:13
Atlantic Cod they could be sold as Atlantic Cod or just Cod and it's the same for Pacific Cod they could legally
57:18
be called Pacific Cod or just Cod so you can imagine a situation right where you
57:23
have some Atlantic Cod is caught it's lab this Cod shipped over to Alberta and
57:29
then the vendor there just assumes it's Pacific because that's the side of the country we're on and then changes the
57:35
label to Pacific so it may not be intentional it's really hard to say exactly what's going on there but legal
57:43
ambiguity is a real issue um in in fostering mislabeling and in hiding
57:49
species of conservation concern so it it's not just the mislabeling itself but also this legal ambiguity and in our
57:56
naming practices these guys that are getting you said there's some big lawsuits out there they're getting charged what's the any idea of the the
58:03
money charges is anywhere close are these guys just paying it off saying ah piss that's nothing you know what I mean
58:10
we're making so much money and it's not a fine of millions of dollars obviously or something like that because they're still doing it right yeah sometimes it's
58:18
sort of slap on the wrist but uh the one in Mississippi I think was actually pretty pretty substantial um but yeah I
58:25
couldn't couldn't quote that off the top of my head uh maybe your viewers can staying right with it they're just
58:31
saying okay let just like a speeding ticket oh good I got that one I'll speed you know what shocked me more about this
58:38
than anything else and I did when I first heard the story over a decade ago we know how anal DFO is in terms of
58:46
sport fishery right the regulations that they have for example blue fin tuna uh
58:51
we personally experienced a couple of occasions where where we we saw
58:56
firsthand how tightly regulated that fishery is we thought we were going to die we thought we were going to jail we
59:04
law we didn't even break the law I I find it hard to believe that you know
59:10
government agencies like DFO isn't on top of this like like yeah when you see
59:16
get when they protected those tuna yeah you're right it just yeah well what yeah when when you think about the sheer
59:22
volume of fish that we eat in Canada and how much of this fish is getting imported from elsewhere the the numbers
59:30
are are enormous and it's the Canadian food inspection agency that is in charge
59:36
of enforcing these regulations and they have to do that not just for our our Seafood but for all foods right so
59:42
they're testing honey and they're testing uh horse meat in the Quebec
59:47
market and and all these uh crazy areas of Fraud and they're under staffed
59:53
they're just I mean I certainly don't want to put blame on on hard government workers who are trying their best to do
59:59
their job they're just it's a lot of different points of entry and it's a lot of different food products and when when
1:00:07
you have a fish that has been stripped of a lot of its identifying features overseas um you know DNA barcoding is
1:00:14
not cheap and so to to to expect that that can happen for every item that
1:00:20
comes across our border is it's just virtually impossible I was always under the impression when you see the these
1:00:26
big um ocean trollers that are harvesting fish and processing it right
1:00:32
on board I I always was underne pressure because I was told that they had to have an
1:00:38
inspector on board at all times and that inspector was there on behalf of the
1:00:45
jurisdiction that represented the area that these fish were caught in that inspector was there uh to keep everybody
1:00:52
honest and so I I'm you know I I dumb it down right but it could still be honest
1:00:58
in that point at that point that's the first point just as it moves on to here to here to here is where the dishonesty
1:01:03
can happen right you buy that [ __ ] for cheap you buy that tilapia for cheap let's just say and then all of a sudden
1:01:08
ain't no tilapia I'm going to sell it for something else so there's so many different points along the line it sounds like that's right so and so many
1:01:15
different countries where the fish are being caught as well that might not have the same sorts of tight regulations
1:01:20
right so it could be more of a case of repackaging rather than pack what I'm thinking other thing about the DFO going
1:01:27
back I think they're again they're understaffed as well but I think the DFO are doing a good job at the point of
1:01:32
capture you know what I mean like the tuna thing I think when they had the Herring boats all out there they're all they're there and they're watching and
1:01:37
they're making sure so these guys are bringing in you know this tons of Herring or tons of whatever and then all
1:01:43
of a sudden after that who knows where it goes and how it gets changed over right so yeah even Canada cot fish might
1:01:49
be shipped to another country to be processed before it ever makes it back to our tables right exactly EXA what
1:01:56
does this all mean for us the consumers people who don't eat fish obviously this is
1:02:02
a doesn't affect them affect them one way or another but for people who consume fish regularly what does this
1:02:07
mean to us yeah well it's definitely for those who are eating fish right it's
1:02:12
it's hurting your wallet you're especially now when grocery prices are so high uh you are paying premium dollar
1:02:19
for inferior product uh and that's just happening across the board particularly
1:02:25
in Sushi um so if you if you love your Snapper just know you're not you're not eating it chances are one out of five
1:02:32
you're eating uh something else totally different yeah it definitely has those Health impacts that you had brought up
1:02:38
earlier so not just escalar but uh as you know there's methyl Mercury concentration in in certain top
1:02:45
carnivores so you may be trying to avoid those particular fish but you're eating them anyways without realizing it um you
1:02:52
know the the Canadian food inspection Agency on their fish list they also put little environmental warnings for
1:02:58
certain fish like bourett they say h you may not want to eat them because they may be bringing environmental toxins and
1:03:03
so okay I'm going to avoid that fish and then perhaps you end up eating it anyways right there's no study loves
1:03:09
bourbon yeah know there there so we don't have see I I I I'm always I'm very
1:03:14
naive when it comes to labels right I'm I'm making an assumption that if I purchase a package
1:03:23
of fish somebody has taken the trouble to test it to see that it's not
1:03:28
contaminated with something right no you're laughing at me don't laugh at me it makes me feel terrible oh no I'm
1:03:35
sorry there's just there's there's so so much product out there that to test everything and again from every point of
1:03:42
entry is is it's not going to be feasible umow even just to put this in perspective the CFI has been doing
1:03:49
mislabeling uh work like they've been sequencing some fish our study in Calgary using undergrads
1:03:56
sampled uh well over a hundred more than the cfia has done in the last several
1:04:01
years right so uh yeah the testing the testing is just not not really there um
1:04:08
wow that's so unfortunate that blows my mind you know going on in the meat world too like how much of it is going on sure
1:04:15
it's going on but in the other meats I know like fish is so broad there's so many fishes that you can use me you
1:04:21
could bet you we're not getting all the stakes that we're thinking that we're getting and all that that we uh we did
1:04:27
this story originally Sean Kelly was with us and um I remember him commenting
1:04:32
on this saying that you know this could never happen in the meat industry and he went on to tell us why because there was
1:04:39
so many steps from from you know the farm to the table that there there's so
1:04:46
many checkpoints he said it could never happen it would be impossible to happen in the meat industry so I well there was
1:04:53
just just a few years ago that my comment about horse meat in Quebec wasn't factious this this was found
1:04:58
right okay but I remember that story too but that's horse meat in a very isolated uh uh part of the country and it's not
1:05:06
not beef and chicken and and all that stuff I I would be shocked if that
1:05:12
industry was regulated at all to be honest with you it's so small but I do
1:05:18
recall something recently about um ground Meats having a mix of species in
1:05:23
them there you see yeah I couldn't couldn't give you details on that I just recall that on my
1:05:29
news feed recently I mean we've grown up uh thinking about uh hot dogs being nothing more than you know scraps that
1:05:36
they left on the ground after all the butchering was done and the grinding was done and you got a little bit of everything in there including beaks and
1:05:43
feet and everything else we jokingly sort of accept that but it's probably not that far from being real oh yeah
1:05:50
when you think that's pretty real that one but but you are right we we do care a lot more about our bird right we go to
1:05:56
a restaurant we we want a a chicken Caesar wrap we don't ask for a bird Caesar wrap we want we want our
1:06:03
hamburger and we know we know if it's a bisen burger or if it's coming from whatever yeah yeah but we seem totally
1:06:10
comfortable ordering fish and chips yeah you know that's the one that gets me because you go into a a good fish and
1:06:16
chip place and and they have uh various categories of investment that'll take from you to have a good meal so they've
1:06:24
got the cheap fish and then the middle but if you want the really good
1:06:29
stuff that's going to cost you 25 bucks a slab and I often wondered you know how how do I even know how do I even know it
1:06:37
could be all now that you tell me this it could all come in it's the same product the ret differently and the
1:06:44
retailer is the one who's making that decision because this is not packaged Goods right so you don't know when he's
1:06:49
putting in your $25 piece of alibet if you didn't take it from The Paddock uh uh or or card place and you know yeah
1:06:58
absolutely there's a fascinating history with fish and chips and uh that the species being predominantly Cod
1:07:04
originally in fish and chip products right and then we fished that out and then moved on to another species and
1:07:10
another species all being sold as fish and chips and the consumer just has no idea that that these species have been
1:07:16
unsustainably harvested and and we've had to substitute one species for another over the years except that
1:07:22
kennedies kennedies kennedies in in London they had Cod they had they told
1:07:29
us it was Cod we paid extra for that Cod we don't know what the hell else it was I don't know what it was but it was good
1:07:35
you know who's got the the upper hand on all of this is that that guy sitting right there called Boba cuz he doesn't
1:07:41
eat meat boa is a vegetarian fish he doesn't eat anything that as he puts it that he has to chase down and kill to
1:07:47
eat he doesn't even give a [ __ ] about this podcast he's said boys you can talk all you want because it's going right past but you know what I'm sure your
1:07:53
vegetables that you're eating are are mislabeled as what we're talking about here so don't go grinning at us okay
1:08:00
yeah said honey for sure has been a target of this mislabeling industry is that right yeah I've heard that sure
1:08:08
yeah maple syrup is another one that's uh often mislabeled there's all kinds of we are living in a fraudulent world
1:08:14
people my God it's all about the dollar too it's all about the dollar as consumers uh what can we do to safeguard
1:08:22
ourselves against this fraudulent go catch and then cut it you cut it up
1:08:27
yourself there is that you know because you need to know what the fish are that are around you first right so you need
1:08:33
to educate yourself if you're going to go out fishing make sure you know the difference between your brown trout and your rainbow trout right right um but
1:08:41
yeah no you're not without defense as the consumer there there are a couple things that you can do uh first is is
1:08:47
buy creatures that haven't been stripped of their identifying features if you can't go out and catch it yourself at
1:08:53
least by headon whole fish oh boy that's that's tough though I mean really I mean
1:08:58
that's really hard to do you walk down a grocery store uh fish uh showcase and
1:09:05
yeah there are a few fish there that are still whole but the majority of them are just filets yeah that's interesting
1:09:11
Calgary we seem to be doing better on this uh I've noticed our grocery stores over the last five years or so have
1:09:17
introduced a whole range like a a broad diversity of head-on whole fish species
1:09:22
oh so so maybe uh it has to do with um the demographics around those grocery
1:09:29
stores but if you you know start voting with your wallet in that way buying those
1:09:34
head-on fish and the grocery stores will uh follow suit and start stocking more of that product but yeah right I mean
1:09:41
that's certainly hard for tuna or you know try getting a head-on hell of it or something in your in your grocery store
1:09:48
but but there's also the fact that you know most of us like we we're we're we're we want that self-gratification
1:09:53
quick and painless we don't want to start you know cutting off I knew you going to say that
1:10:00
iing I want to go and put my 20 bucks down and I want a chunk of fish and I want to put it in the fryer or the and I
1:10:07
want to eat the damn thing right now yeah so so the second thing you can do is look for um C certified products that
1:10:14
with say the Marine Stewardship Council or uh ocean wise or one of those um
1:10:20
sustainable certified labels th those aren't perfect but studies of DNA
1:10:26
barcoding of of those certified products have showed substantially lower rates of
1:10:31
mislabeling compared to your typical product so you're at least more likely to be buying what you think you're
1:10:37
buying when you get cert certified sustainable products that's a whole another
1:10:42
Conversation Over sustainable certification and whether they're actually sustainably harvested or not
1:10:48
but at least we know you're you're likely to get um Walley poock uh if it's
1:10:54
been sustain stably certified as wal poic um and then the other thing you can
1:11:00
do is purchase species that have uh precise labels rather than ambiguous
1:11:05
labels what we found is even though uh there's a lot of wiggle room in our our naming conventions like you can legally
1:11:12
call something Snapper and that can refer to 96 different species of Snapper in Canada totally legal or you can have
1:11:18
something called tuna and it could refer to any of 14 different species of tuna that vary from critically endangered to
1:11:24
least concern totally legal you can buy that it's called tuna and it could be you know extremely endangered or doing
1:11:30
just fine and you have no idea totally legal focus on the products that have
1:11:36
those precise labels they're called Atlantic Cod instead of cod they're called Southern bluin instead of just
1:11:42
tuna um and you're both more likely to get what you think you're getting uh and
1:11:48
you're less likely to eat uh an endangered species If you're sort of targeting those those creatures that
1:11:55
that are labeled precisely and are labeled uh uh with names that aren't
1:12:00
endangered you're more likely to be eating something that isn't of conservation concern but again it's not perfect did your yeah did your study um
1:12:09
show that there's more of this fraudulent activity taking place in
1:12:15
we'll call them the box stores of fishery versus the the fishmonger you
1:12:22
know in your neighborhood that's been there for three generations bringing in fresh fish and having it unpackaged and
1:12:29
selling it to you with a with a with an actual name on it is there is there any
1:12:35
evidence that would lead us to believe that this is being done by the Big Chain stores and not the little mpaw operators
1:12:43
yeah well for in part because these were undergrads who were going out and targeting what was most readily
1:12:49
available it was mostly sushi restaurants and grocery stores the big grocery stores that we targeted and in
1:12:54
those places labeling rates are about the same um I went out and sampled a local uh Little Mom and Pop fish vendor
1:13:03
right who sold like white fish and walleye and those sorts of things um in those very few samples it was everything
1:13:10
was exactly what I expected it to be okay so I mean that was reassuring in a way Calgary doesn't have a massive Fish
1:13:17
Market um like you might have on the coast so we we predominantly get our fish from restaurants and the big
1:13:22
grocery stores and in in those cases there's definitely a lot of mislabeling going
1:13:28
on and I and I got my walleye from I'm going to be a name dropper it doesn't
1:13:33
it's not negative or Costco of all places Costco has become one of the biggest retailers of fish in this
1:13:40
country we buy our salmon from Costco all the time great you get the great big chunk in it just beautifully orange and
1:13:46
it's wonderful looking stuff it tastes great now now I mean I'm going to go in there with a whole different approach I
1:13:52
don't even know how I'm going to deal with it to be honest bring Matthew with this DNA testing equipment there we go check it out I'll
1:13:59
call the manager and say listen I want to buy some fish there but I'm going to Comm in a DNA test everything you got in
1:14:04
the shop are you good with that well you know what you could probably you know reach out to the University of GF they
1:14:11
they're the pioneers of DNA barcoding and they've they've done a lot of this fish testing would it be fun to just
1:14:16
grab them and go to the grocery store and do some of this testing in your local supplier aw that would be awesome
1:14:22
that'd be fun there's a TV show right there no kidding we have fishing Canada episode I love it I love it what's next
1:14:29
uh for you guys obviously this is just a tip of the iceberg uh have you got different uh programs in place that will
1:14:37
take you take this to the next level are you branching off into other areas of testing what what do you got what do you
1:14:43
got cooking yeah so so my main question right now is around this legal ambiguity in naming and how to improve our naming
1:14:49
practices in order to reduce mislabeling so the big one right now is is salmon um
1:14:55
what we found is things that are labeled as Atlantic salmon were always Atlantic salmon but if they were labeled salmon
1:15:02
which legally has to be Atlantic salmon they were any number of things from from tuna to tilapia to a variety of Pacific
1:15:08
salmon and rainbow trouts wow but our sample sizes weren't huge on this so the next step is to um have a couple um
1:15:16
comparators of species that are sold under these sort of generic ambiguous labels and and the same species sold
1:15:23
under precise labels and compare rates mislabeling between them right because then you know we could make particular
1:15:29
recommendations to the cfia that just get rid of this salmon designator entirely and it will uh prevent vast
1:15:38
amounts of mislabeling or get rid of that Cod label perhaps if it's Atlantic Cod and Pacific COD only then we can get
1:15:45
rid of some of our mislabeling so trying to find because there's no one- siiz fits-all approach but finding some some
1:15:51
targeted areas where we can improve our labeling laws so yeah that that's next steps that'll that'll take me for the
1:15:57
next year or two and based on the conversation I've heard here today there really is no difference
1:16:04
between uh product labeling of uh
1:16:09
aquaculture fishery versus wild caught ocean fishery they've both been um now
1:16:17
exposed as potential mislabeling or is there one more so than the other uh well a lot of products just
1:16:24
aren't labeled as wild or or Farm but it's something we do take note of I
1:16:29
don't have the statistics on that but definitely you know your tilapia is aquaculture raised but being sold as a
1:16:35
wild cot fish so salmon so Sal salmon yeah that's right and and in that case
1:16:41
you're having you're presuming you're buying aquaculture salmon and you're getting aquaculture rainbow trout instead so it's just one Farm thing
1:16:47
being substituted for another right where's the big where's the who is the largest exporter of tilapia what part of
1:16:53
the world is it anybody I mean my guess would be China but I I really don't know tilapia is becoming
1:16:59
big worldwide but it's a great alternative to to a lot of other I think
1:17:07
fish for consumption purposes oh totally palatable fish right it doesn't have much of a expensive flavor tell us what
1:17:13
it is that's all you know buy Tilapia at a nice reduced price how do you feel about uh we we just briefly touched on
1:17:21
aquaculture how do you feel about that whole uh pen raised food fish Source
1:17:28
versus wild CAU versus you know where do you where can you
1:17:34
sustainably um go with this industry that does not include contaminating wild
1:17:41
waters for wild fish what's your position on all that yeah that's where I cut my teeth on aquaculture that was my
1:17:48
my beginning at delosi was farmed in Wild Atlantic salmon and what happens when they hybridize and escape and all
1:17:54
this sort of stuff um so there definitely some negatives to aquaculture when it's done uh along say
1:18:01
wild salmon Rivers right like that that that's a real problem yeah um Inland uh
1:18:07
aquaculture is is pricier but uh safer for the environment I I think uh you're
1:18:13
not going to get those antibiotics sort of settling down from the ca cage and changing the ecosystem underneath and
1:18:18
you're not going to get the Predators that are targeting the C cages right as the wild salmon are moving up the river
1:18:24
right there's lots of issues there and escapees right probably the biggest benefit of Inland pens is is the escapee
1:18:31
factor that's that's the biggest game changer I think I was going to say that I was going to say with Perry Sound we
1:18:36
we shot up a Perry Sound my God we we shot a whole show entire show about to escape ease and I kept one to eat and it
1:18:43
was fraking delicious oh sure oh my God was it good was a rainbow tro I thought
1:18:48
you know I thought oh what's it going to taste and it was so good get a 100,000 salmon escaping right at the mouth of a
1:18:54
river that historically supports 5,000 salmon right that that's that's going to be a problem wow but then you have
1:19:01
increased prices so Canadian consumers just need to be aware that if they want to support aquaculture they need to pay
1:19:07
premium dollar for Canadian aquaculture products is we're just not gonna be able to compete with say salmon raised down
1:19:13
in Chile um that's always just going to be cheaper uh with all of its Associated
1:19:18
ecological uh problems so so long as we're willing to pay a bit more I do
1:19:24
think culture is feasible should the consumer arm themselves with uh the knowledge uh of what is on the
1:19:32
endangered species and what is not and I mentioned earlier on in the program uh orange ruffy I used to consume orange
1:19:39
ruffy more than any other fish because it was delicious until you know I
1:19:44
started hearing the Doom and Gloom on that species and and lo and behold about the same time I was hearing that I saw a
1:19:51
decline in Orange ruffy on the Shelf is it uh something that we should maybe
1:19:57
send that message out right now to folks that are tuning in listening to this that maybe as an informed consumer we
1:20:05
can curb some of these um mislabeled products and or even the packaging of
1:20:12
products that you know like Chile and Seabass is another good example because obviously it's supply and demand if
1:20:19
there's no demand we don't need a supply and that would alleviate the problem that's right
1:20:25
yeah know it would be wonderful if Canadians knew more about the wonderful fish diversity that we have around us and all their incredible behaviors and
1:20:32
just their their beautiful ways of being rather than oh I'm going to buy fish and chips like let's think a little more
1:20:37
seriously about what this creature is yeah uh that we're about to consume and be grateful for this creature yeah um if
1:20:44
we started you know asking more questions about why do we need Atlantic salmon aquaculture in the first place well it's the 70% decline in our native
1:20:52
Atlantic salmon stocks in New Brunswick NOA SC right then we could start asking
1:20:57
maybe better questions about how to conserve those rivers and bring those
1:21:03
fish back up to a level where they could be sustainably harvested again yeah I'm absolutely all for letting people know
1:21:09
you know there's a reason tilapia is on the market instead of Snapper that's because red snapper is not doing well so
1:21:16
uh it gives the illusion that red snappers thriving because you can buy it everywhere but actually you're not ever
1:21:22
eating it so yeah absolutely the more the more your listeners could be aware
1:21:27
of uh the plight of our fishes both in Canada and globally the the happier I am
1:21:32
where can they inform themselves where can you send them someplace well first of all where can they get uh to read
1:21:37
your studies and and get their own conclusions how can they reach you or or whoever for this yeah so the the the
1:21:44
paper's Open Access so anyone can access it it's in the journal Pier J uh and it
1:21:49
just came out this year look for mislabeled here's here's the paper right here a copy of it mislabeled and
1:21:54
ambiguous Market names in invertebrate and finfish seafood conceal species of
1:22:00
conservation concerning Calgary Alberta Canada so that's through PJ um available
1:22:05
online to anyone who's interested uh they can email me if they would like uh at matthew. Morris os. it's m a HW
1:22:17
period m o r RIS at Ambrose doedu or they can find all my Publications at
1:22:23
Matthew moris biology. wordpress.com beautifully done excellent that that Dean is going to be happy he
1:22:30
doesn't have to do that at the end of the show so you got it covered uh Matthew uh we can't thank you enough for
1:22:36
joining us obviously uh we would like to uh leave an invitation to you at any
1:22:42
time when you've got more information uh maybe uh new breakthroughs or or a
1:22:48
different direction that this fraudulent activity is is going or a message just a
1:22:54
message to the public yeah just uh reach out to us if we'll reach out to you as well but
1:22:59
reach out to us don't be afraid to uh to give us I would be more more than happy to do that thank you so much for having
1:23:05
me this has been an absolute treat thank you for joining us uh wow that's what I
1:23:11
said 20 years ago when I first heard this story I'll say it again it hasn't changed much has it I find it hard to
1:23:16
believe yeah I find it hard to the regulations well there's no regulations
1:23:22
really is what it sounds like uh wow Matthew Morris that was that was very that was that was good man I'll tell you
1:23:30
now I don't buy a lot of fish but we do we buy like I said we buy salmon a little bit here than that but well lately I have been uh only because I
1:23:38
just discovered it a few months ago at at Costco and I said wow you know what let me try it I keep I keep saying that
1:23:47
domestically you know uh harvested walleye are not the same as when we do a
1:23:52
Shore lunch out in the wild let me let me buy and then I see on the label it says wild caught right I'm envisioning
1:23:58
see that's the other thing too wild caught to me means somebody was sitting on a point and throwing jigs out and
1:24:06
caught that walleye last night you know what I mean no that was wild C what I'm
1:24:12
assuming would be uh legal commercial Nets in in Lake
1:24:18
year or something like that well caught rightly but I got to tell you I got to tell you I it's it's so good I was even
1:24:25
able to convert total non-fish eaters I've done that before with Walla here
1:24:30
that's the one species you can do it with and they're now hooked on it so right on so to speak I don't that's the
1:24:37
the Snapper one is the most uh alarming one to me like like obviously if you're
1:24:43
at a sushi bar do not order Snapper cuz you're not going to get Snapper yeah or
1:24:48
I mean or as Matthew alluded to you know you're going to get Snapper but if you a
1:24:54
choice why not go for a species that's not on the list um as maybe Snapper is
1:25:01
right and that's why it's more difficult to find 100% of red snapper Snapper and
1:25:06
red snapper prodcts were mislabeled 100% so don't buy it folks cuz you're
1:25:11
not getting it don't think you're having a little special Snapper meal there you're you're not you ain't getting
1:25:16
it uh that are it for us that's interesting I might not have my walleye
1:25:22
dinner this weekend coming that I wanted to I might just take a weekend off from it rethink you been doing it every
1:25:28
weekend yeah well because of my diet it's perfect right it's perfect so right and
1:25:34
I batter it with a a glutenfree get the hell out of here look
1:25:40
at you fantastic gluten free you are a new man you're a new man wash your down
1:25:46
with a little whiskey maybe or two or beer doesn't hurt well you have that one got to have a beer with that when you're
1:25:51
having a fish for sure do you guys talk about the contest yet no we're just going to that I thought you were going
1:25:56
to sign off I I had been out of the room I stepped out thank you for uh we've been talking about the whole entire great podcast we just had din know so
1:26:03
we're still we're still just uh ending on that soccer so that's why I can't sign off until we talk about this cuz he
1:26:10
put it up on the screen behind me uh do you want to win a 9.9 outboard motor of
1:26:15
course you do Mercury of course you do why wouldn't you four stroke uh well now thanks to J and B cycle and Marine you
1:26:23
have that opportunity uh just go to fishing canada.com uh enter the contest that's
1:26:29
there now and you could win yourself a fully functional fuel injected uh
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electronic ignition whatever the hell they come with and Mr uh Mr Pete has a
1:26:43
bonus code for everyone does he really let's go pet Mr Pete has the bonus code for this week so people uh if you want
1:26:50
to have maybe 10 extra entries to this uh this week's code is Sushi all
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capitals s u Shi Sushi type that in and
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uh pretend free entries towards our current all of our current giveaways not just the Mercury motor and everything
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got going on there huh if I didn't uh enforce this message enough I just want to do it again it's J&B cycle marine and
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Marine see I missed an an there too and Marine uh Ontario's largest Princecraft
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Mercury dealer it's said Ampersand whatever they call that's you don't you're you're blinded out on that one I
1:27:27
think is what' you say what you call me Ampersand I I resemble that whatever that means I got other ones for you
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buddy they're better uh largest uh Princecraft Mercury dealer in the province um in operation since 1970 by
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the way that's an interesting thing too uh outboard motors fully equipped printcraft boats uh fishing models
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family modelss great people that run it too great people that run it so
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familyowned business and they do a good job so uh you can check them out at JB cycle.com that's JB cycle.com and get
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all the goods and details maybe just drop them a line and say hey thanks for making uh uh this wonderful contest
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possible uh with the merury 9.9 motor giveaway which is uh I think ongoing
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until Christmas yep that's right so w what a Christmas present
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woo that are it uh I want to thank everybody for joining us uh on behalf of
1:28:24
of our illustrious team Eva the non-fish Eater over there who will not be
1:28:29
affected by the mislabeling unless his rudaba is really a cucumber aha see
1:28:36
there you go uh Nick nice to see you in well that too uh Dean Taylor are uh
1:28:45
what is he today today I call him producer he today's he was a scrutinizer
1:28:50
because he wanted to make sure we didn't miss that when he come out there on the straight narrow sometimes it's like
1:28:56
hurting cats on yes indeed uh this guy here he's Peter Bowman I'm Angel by all
1:29:01
thanks folks we'll catch you next night
1:29:07
[Music] [Applause] [Music]
1:29:20
[Music] [Applause] this episode of Outdoor Journal radio
1:29:26
has been brought to you in part by the invasive species Center protecting Canada's land and water from invasive
1:29:33
species Freedom Cruise Canada rent the boat own the memories jmbb cycle a
1:29:40
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Your Seafood Is Not What You Think It Is | Outdoor Journal Radio ep. 147

fishncanada.com

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Your Seafood Is Not What You Think It Is | Outdoor Journal Radio ep. 147

fishncanada.com