From SeafoodMedia on July 5, a new publication is helping the United States build a more complete genetic reference bank and protect consumers from "seafood fraud”.

In 2007, a couple bought two fish labeled as "frozen bok fish" in the market. After eating them, both of them experienced nausea and vomiting, tingling in the mouth and limbs, headache and chest pain. This is a typical phenomenon of pufferfish poisoning, and the label content of this product is "Headless Monkfish". This is deliberate mislabelling by importers to evade U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) import restrictions.

Even before the 2007 incident, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) import inspectors in Los Angeles suspected that mislabeled fugu meat was entering their ports.

However, they had no way of confirming this, as the fillets had been separated from the rest of the fish and stripped of all identifiable characteristics. The only way to determine what a product is is through genetic sequencing, a tool not widely used within the FDA.

Since 2006, the FDA has been sending these suspicious samples to researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

The researchers used a novel genetic sequencing technique called DNA barcoding, which sequences short, standardized fragments of an organism's DNA and compared these fragments to a library of sequences, or "barcodes”, generated from certified specimens , which allows researchers to quickly and efficiently identify species or differentiate them.

The technical project brought together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and professionals, with collaborating organizations including NOAA's Department of Fisheries, the Smithsonian Institution, the FDA, and the Philippine National Institute of Fisheries Research and Development.

Team members collected about 4,000 specimens from the Philippine fish market, and performed DNA biological sequencing in the Analytical Biology Laboratory. In 2021, these samples and DNA sequencing data will be handed over to the NOAA National System Laboratory.

The DNA barcodes produced by this project will help U.S. officials keep seafood consumers safe and ensure products are properly labeled. As of 2023, the project has expanded to collect samples from other parts of the world.