44th WEFTA meeting, 9-11 June 2014, Bilbao (Spain)Fraud refers to deliberate actions intended for the misleading of consumers in different ways. In the case of seafood, most of the time the term fraud involves the substitution of valuable species by others of lower price, therefore meaning an economic loss for consumers, but also mislabelling can hide other malpractices such as illegal capture procedures.
Traceability of fish and seafood is mandatory since 2005 within the EU. Full implementation requires an adequate management of information and also the availability of techniques, which allow the verification of the information transmitted. These are essential tools to combat food fraud, however recent cases have shown that although legislation and techniques are available there are still some crisis related with food fraud which merit a deep evaluation and analysis of the problem .
LABELFISH is a project funded by the Atlantic Area Programme and includes participants of six countries in Europe, mainly from the Atlantic area, which are characterized by an intense economic and social relationship with marine resources. One of the main aims of LABELFISH is the establishment of a network of laboratories and national control bodies with experience and interest in seafood labelling and traceability. The objectives include the level of implementation of traceability schemes in most important European seafood value chains, the analysis and detection of possible examples of seafood fraud across Europe, the consumers perception about seafood labelling, the current ethodologies used for controlling the veracity of seafood labels, and how to propose harmonized methodologies for the adequate control of seafood labelling in the European Union. This talk will focus on the Labelfish aspects related with the harmonization of fish species identification methodologies in the context of LABELFISHN
