Shark Mislabeling Threatens Biodiversity
As commercial fisheries struggle to apply regulatory and legal mechanisms that depend on reliable species-specific data (1), the shark industry faces an even greater obstacle to transparency: Sellers change product names to overcome consumer resistance. For instance, South Africa sells shark meat (shortfin mako shark) mislabeled as “ocean fillets” or “skomoro” and in doing so threatens a vulnerable species (2). Conversely, the European Union (3) requires listing the species name on shark products to avoid fraud and to help conserve certain species (4).
The situation is even worse in many developing countries [e.g., Mozambique, Costa Rica, India, Sri Lanka, and Borneo (5)], where shark meat is commonly sold without proper identification. In Brazilian supermarkets, elasmobranchs (members of a fish subclass distinguished by the lack of swim bladders) are sold as “cação,” a popular name for any small shark species or pup. Consumers do not understand that cação refers to any elasmobranch, regardless of its size or species. This intentional mislabeling compromises efforts to lessen shark consumption or to promote consumption of nonthreatened species...
