The truth behind dory fish | Undercover Asia | Full Episode

Summary

Highlights

• Pangasius, a popular fish, faces criticism for alleged contamination and poor farming conditions. 🐡⚠️
• There's significant debate on whether the Mekong River's water quality is harmful to farmed Pangasius. 🚰🧐
• Many foreign reports criticizing Pangasius come from misinformation and commercial rivalry. ☝️🔄
• A substantial amount of Pangasius is fraudulently labeled as premium fish in the market. 🐠🎭
• Vietnamese producers emphasize the economic importance and safety standards of Pangasius. 🇻🇳💹

Key Takeaways

• Pangasius fish, often called Dory, is at the center of controversy over safety and environmental impact. 🐟🤔
• Claims of Pangasius being raised in polluted waters have been countered by experts citing lack of evidence. 🌊👩‍🔬
• Food fraud is rampant, with Pangasius often mislabeled as more expensive fish. 💰🔍
• Despite allegations, no direct health risks from consuming Pangasius have been proven. 🕵️‍♀️🍽️
• The Pangasius industry is crucial for global protein supply but faces challenges of perception and regulation. 🌐📉

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Controversy Surrounding Dory Fish Dory fish is popular yet controversial due to concerns about safety. Critics allege it contains harmful chemicals, with poor production conditions posing health risks. Seafood producers rebut claims that pollution in the Mekong River Delta affects the fish.
• 01:30 - 03:30: Mekong Delta and Vietnamese Aquaculture The chapter discusses numerous issues affecting the Mekong Delta and Vietnamese aquaculture, particularly relating to health concerns, foreign competition, and economic impacts. Issues arise from the river's pollution, with weekly tests conducted to monitor the situation. Foreign competitors are advocating for a ban on Vietnamese aquaculture exports. The chapter also highlights the economic aspects, noting the vast number of fish imported from this region. Additionally, some fish are fraudulently sold as more expensive varieties, pointing to significant potential profits. Despite the economic benefits of the fish trade, the text suggests that its profitability outweighs even that of narcotics and people smuggling trades.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Rise of Pangasius Industry in Vietnam The chapter discusses the emergence and growth of the Pangasius industry in Vietnam. It delves into the economic and social impact of the industry, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges it presents. The narrative also touches on the controversies and fraudulent practices within the industry, such as mislabeling and ethical concerns in production. Insights into how the industry has transformed Vietnam's position in the global seafood market may also be provided. The chapter likely ends with reflections on the sustainability and future prospects of the Pangasius industry in Vietnam.
• 05:30 - 07:30: Criticism and Health Concerns The chapter titled "Criticism and Health Concerns" likely covers critiques and health issues concerning the Mekong Delta region in southern Vietnam. Given the sparse information from the transcript, it could potentially discuss environmental, societal, or economic impacts on health, possibly in relation to local or global criticism. The chapter might explore challenges faced by residents or governmental and non-governmental responses to these concerns.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Defense and Industry Standards The chapter titled 'Defense and Industry Standards' discusses the significance of the Mekong River to the Vietnamese economy and aquaculture industry. The Mekong River is highlighted as a crucial resource with clear water, supporting Vietnam's substantial aquaculture business which generates two billion US dollars annually in exports. This underscores the growing global demand for seafood.
• 09:30 - 11:30: The Role of Small-Scale Pangasius Farmers The growing demand for cheap protein has been met by aquaculture, specifically farmed fish such as Pangasius. European and US markets have increasingly viewed Pangasius as an alternative to more traditional white fish like Pollock and cod. The warm waters of the Mekong Delta have been instrumental in facilitating the development of Pangasius farming to meet this demand.
• 11:30 - 13:30: Food Fraud and Mislabeling Issues The chapter discusses food fraud and mislabeling issues with a focus on the fish Pangasius. This fish is an ideal replacement for overfished ocean seafood due to its fast growth and adaptability. However, despite its success story, there's controversy and confusion surrounding its name. In Singapore, it's referred to as 'dory,' in Europe as 'basa' or 'Vietnamese cobbler,' and in America as 'catfish.' Its proper name is Pangasius, reflecting a case of mislabeling and potential food fraud.
• 13:30 - 15:00: Consumer Awareness and Final Thoughts The chapter discusses the concept of products having different names in different markets, using the Xbox as an example. It mentions Xbox's significant influence in Vietnam, emphasizing its importance as a resource. The text also highlights Pigasus fish, noting that Vietnam accounts for 70 to 80 percent of its global production. The fish is praised for its cost-effectiveness and suitability for fish farming.

The truth behind dory fish | Undercover Asia | Full Episode Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 it's one of the world's most popular fish it's also one of the most controversial catfish from Asia has been proven to contain cancer-causing chemicals its critics say it's mass produced in dirty conditions endangering consumers health every year 220,000 tons of industrial waste are dumped into the mekong river delta sea food producers deny the river poses a
• 00:30 - 01:00 health problem it's nothing wrong with the make on their downriver kill it cap tests every week foreign competitors have campaigned to have it banned we imported millions and millions of fish Phillips caught in this slop and it's also an ideal fish for food fraudsters who can pass it off as far more expensive species if you add the might of money that's made in narcotics trade and people smuggling put it together it doesn't even come close to the amount of
• 01:00 - 01:30 fraud that's going on and money that's made in our food system so what's the real story about that fish on your planet [Music] [Music]
• 01:30 - 02:00 [Music] the Mekong Delta stretches over 40,000 square kilometers of southern Vietnam [Music] we are to take five minutes from here
• 02:00 - 02:30 we say that the mekong river and you can see that the color is very very clear when it be the river is a vital resource for the Vietnamese people and it's fish farmers home to Viet Nam's massive aquaculture business worth two billion US dollars a year in exports the world is eating more fish now than ever but while Court seafood can't
• 02:30 - 03:00 satisfy this booming demand for cheap protein aquaculture or farmed fish can Europe the US especially developed countries saw the Pangasius as a alternative white fish to say Pollock or cod so it was another alternative for them to develop that led to to demand the warm waters of the Mekong Delta are
• 03:00 - 03:30 ideal for farming Pangasius a fast-growing whitefish and an ideal replacement for over fished ocean seafood but it's a great success story that's muddied by controversy and confusion in Singapore they call it dory in Europe they call it basa or Vietnamese cobbler in America it's called catfish in Vietnam its proper name is Pangasius it's all the same fish
• 03:30 - 04:00 but go by different names in different markets engages in some of the Xbox repaid one of the most important resource in Vietnam at the moment the Xbox about more than 70 to 80 percent of the ball of Pigasus for the whole world it's one of the most successful fish on the block it's cheap to produce ideally suited to fish farming or
• 04:00 - 04:30 aquaculture most people don't realize know that more than 50% of all the fish that we eat now in the world has come from aquaculture and it is giving a livelihood to many many millions of people across the world and that's what the people of Vietnam needed following liberalization of their economy in the 90s commercial large-scale farming providing commodities they could export at industrial levels in the 1990s that's
• 04:30 - 05:00 a bunch of French scientists came in to Vietnam and developed the spawning technology and that was the start of the Pangasius boom what I want to talk to you about tonight is seafood professor Simon Busch is one of the world's leading experts on the global production of sustainable seafood he's also studied the growth of Pangasius production in Vietnam from that moment you started to see a lot of cage culture of Pangasius along the
• 05:00 - 05:30 rivers in Vietnam and as a result of that they started to look not only for markets within Vietnam but also abroad [Music] go to Cosi food was established by jong un's father 30 years ago it's now one of the leading exporters of Pangasius
• 05:30 - 06:00 products in vietnam it's only in Vietnam that we can produce the best quality upon useless product the government tried to protect the Pigasus industry because it brings revenue to them the export revenue down this products going to Switzerland and this is a very big customer for us this
• 06:00 - 06:30 motor yourself at the very high price so it's a good profit margin the initial success of Vietnamese Pangasius sales overseas soon attracted attention from other fish producers and trouble Pangasius producers were hit with a deluge of criticism rubbishing its reputation in the United States and 90% of seafood consumed is imported but in Europe at 65% whether fishery is important they've become less and less
• 06:30 - 07:00 competitive when it comes to a globally traded seafood market so these countries have a very strong that say they have a very strong opinion about the incoming seafood over the past two years millions of pounds of seafood from China and Vietnam were refused entry into the United States because independent tests found the fish contain banned drugs and chemicals including known carcinogens there were damning media reports that the fish is farmed in filthy conditions
• 07:00 - 07:30 and isn't fit to eat there's been so much said about the Pangasius industry over the last decade and so much misinformation which has been put into the public it's very difficult to distinguish you know fiction from facts Pangasius is sold as catfish in America u.s. catfish producers alarmed by the sudden threat of competition lobbied the American government to ban the import of Pangasius they also encouraged American
• 07:30 - 08:00 and foreign media scrutiny of the alleged health risks of the fish when you buy imported catfish you may be getting more than you bargained for catfish from Asia has been proven to contain cancer-causing chemicals unapproved drugs industrial wastes u.s. farm-raised catfish on the other hand is inspected by the USDA for food safety we
• 08:00 - 08:30 see a number of claims made against Pangasius that it's unsafe to eat that it's associated with poor working conditions and in general that the Mekong River is is a poor environments the quality of the water in the Mekong Delta where the Pangasius is farmed was the first target for the anti Pangasius campaigners first thing I often do in they look down at the river and see brown water especially in the rainy season and brown water to them was dirty water and that's not a very scientific
• 08:30 - 09:00 way to assess how clean a river is but you know it is a muddy river the president of the catfish Institute in America called the Mekong the toilet bowl of Asia and a spokesman claimed that in many cases fish are essentially raised in cesspools but defenders of Vietnamese Pangasius say there is no good evidence that the Delta is dangerously contaminated or that fish raised in these waters is unsafe to eat it has a lot of organic
• 09:00 - 09:30 content are there pollutants in the river no doubt but it's a very important thing to realize that there's a difference between a pollutant being in the river as a hazard but also the difference between that and actually understanding the risk that opposes you have to have very clear amounts of any pollutant for it suppose a risk it's a human health but also to the environment this is child of a small
• 09:30 - 10:00 town in the north of Vietnam it's where many of the critical foreign media reports were filmed every year two hundred and twenty thousand tons of industrial waste are dumped into the Mekong River Delta sewage from these houses goes directly into the water children play in the water people wash their clothes their dishes and themselves in the same water where they raise ducks and throw trash the foreign
• 10:00 - 10:30 reports allege that Pangasius was unsafe to eat because it was produced in heavily polluted waters but were these reports fair and accurate when I hear that claims are made that the Mekong River is one of the most polluted in the world I haven't seen evidence for that [Music] whoo-ha no it often showed as a little work while you can board and lucky for
• 10:30 - 11:00 you my but then he gave professor Leon torn is a senior lecturer at the University of canto and has studied the water quality of the Mekong since the start of his career well I sorta Dilton July don't look that do something to work to help a few people I hope we weren't open and long after lilac until human-looking I like [ __ ] up the surprise I mean it was so
• 11:00 - 11:30 what there's no laughter people afternoon happiness because I need folks isms over to encircle cacao cake I asked him look me he might be taller above the charge of the super like in my honor for oxygen so true it on consignment and large [Music] the professor says focusing simply on
• 11:30 - 12:00 the appearance of the water is misleading when it comes to judging if fish farmed here is safe to eat welcome our model Adam Levine you dog not long ago he sounded behind him chatter when friend Amir some tell you now suppressive fire had a scepter faced up with dr. do something but they had no food or substance on development of new sample in fact experts say that clear looking water may mean it lacks the nutrients fish need to grow
• 12:00 - 12:30 we have to understand that there are
• 12:30 - 13:00 rigorous testing regimes over the fish and if we're talking about a food safety issue the systems are in place to pick those pollutants up so can we trust those systems to safeguard our health [Music] [Music]
• 13:00 - 13:30 [Music] thankee tongue has worked for vin hone the biggest single producer of Pangasius in the world for the last seven years we need to sterilize our shoes this year a hygiene procedures to prevent disease from the other farms into our farm just one chi or bacteria can cause the disease Foreman guesses the farm here
• 13:30 - 14:00 has 12 large ponds each raising up to half a million fish in every production cycle tongue says they monitor the water constantly to ensure that the fish produced in these waters is safe to eat want equality in the Mekong River before we pull the water into the pot the tests she says of consistency and quality in the fish assemble and sent to the lab
• 14:00 - 14:30 who fed regularly the pesticide residue and heavy metal sometimes low temperatures or unusual cloudiness in the rainy season means they'll delay changing the water in the ponds they do add chemicals to the water as some
• 14:30 - 15:00 critics accuse them off but they say they're not harmful chemical but we're in nature all like probiotics prebiotics you taste the water then we pump the water from the river into the pond and then we will you allow to taste the water these enclosed ponds are also better for the environment than open cages in the river in 2010 the World Wildlife Fund a
• 15:00 - 15:30 global authority on the environment what Vietnamese Pangasius on there don't buy lists and seemingly supported a damning German documentary about farming conditions but following strong protests from the Vietnamese WWF conceded that they had used outdated and incomplete information the documentary was not supported by WWF international who
• 15:30 - 16:00 decided it was better to work together with the Vietnamese Pangasius industry to certify their practices and raise them to global standards we find the farmers to be eager to hear what we have to say eager to work together to achieve our shared goals that is a long-term sustainable future for the industry that truly is in harmony with nature it was off to actually visiting the Pangasius farms on the Delta at the invitation of the Vietnamese government that the WWF
• 16:00 - 16:30 reversed their position at the moment it's nothing wrong with 'no make on their theory though because it got estes every every week every monthly weekly yearly if it's there's a problem with mcentire that we would be growing the fish in this kind of play no the water quality the Vietnamese Pangasius that most people eat is mass-produced and prepared for export in modern factories like this one owned by John's family there's
• 16:30 - 17:00 different opinions but I don't a lot of people my especially my customers really like the face of a Geisha jong-un is confident that the industry can survive all criticisms if it is really like a body seeing as it's a bad fish is not a good quality fish that you will see the slum in the demand right now but you can see the quiet opposite is really going up right now he managed to go up and the price go up the damming American media reports resulted in
• 17:00 - 17:30 Vietnamese Pangasius being banned in three US states u.s. catfish farmers were very threatened by the rise of this and Vietnamese catfish they kind of looked at this and said okay it's it's a lot cheaper than us and our costs are this and we apply to this standard and must be cheaper and therefore the processes must be bad and you know I think there was some element of yeah protectionism and in trying to find it
• 17:30 - 18:00 or a reason why you know if it can compete in its low cost it must be made in a bad way but the cost of production is just much cheaper in Vietnam producers say they have survived the campaign's of vilification by targeting markets closer to home without US market we we still do it well right we have China market we have you know other Asian market we have Middle East market
• 18:00 - 18:30 we have basically beside us we have the rest of the market in the world and that's yeah we're not too worried about that but the Pangasius is not in the clear yet the questions and allegations keep coming there is a massive risk to us all in the future in terms of the big issue of antimicrobial resistance professor Chris Elliott runs the Global Institute of food security in the UK and is a leader
• 18:30 - 19:00 in tackling the multinational challenges of food safety I haven't find reports of people dying or getting ill from eating an gaseous but the real issue are what are the long-term effects of eating food products not only fish but other things that are pumped full of antibiotics the industry maintains that international standards are followed in the fish they export both in the fish feed and any use of antibiotics Levant home works for a
• 19:00 - 19:30 contract farmer supplying Vinho Vietnam's largest Pangasius producer amongst other companies he says he has to follow strict guidelines challenged
• 19:30 - 20:00 open ban hunger is hold till tea company liner more outcome and animo high belong Anatole he's keen to show us that his fish food is free of harmful ingredients a 10 pack or two kangjun pit now you go back that book much some gal book my
• 20:00 - 20:30 damn girl Oh Yahoo no nan catalyzed she come in fine with a mean yellow who can take like a block so you're moving leo come on go terracotta capita really it's not that easy to put antibiotic to put more chemical inside the fields and sell it everything is approved by the agency so it's not like we do it just
• 20:30 - 21:00 for us nonetheless antibiotic resistance is a growing and very real threat while big producers say their use of antibiotics is tightly regulated and safe some of the world's leading experts on food safety are far from convinced we do have this massive issue of antimicrobial resistance and what that really means to all of us is the antibiotics that we get prescribed for the for our health for our family's health are becoming less and less
• 21:00 - 21:30 effective on the reason for that overuse of antibiotics yet we have some of these very intensive industries particularly aquaculture that relies very heavily on the use of such antibiotics if something really has to be stamped out it's not just the use of antibiotics that are alleged to be harmful in the production of Pangasius in Vietnam there are further disturbing claims mostly circulated on the internet that hormones from the urine of pregnant women are
• 21:30 - 22:00 injected into the Pangasius for lip reading is misleading information because a chemical extracted is in a laboratory vite am the CEO of vin hone says that while hormones are used in the breeding process they're manufactured in a laboratory it's a chemically produced hormone not a natural one which may not be that reassuring for many consumers the hormone allows eggs to be extracted
• 22:00 - 22:30 manually from the fish-out-of-water and fertilized for some the thought of eating fish produced using these techniques is pretty revolting but is it actually harmful to our health I think consumers do have a right to know about what the hazards are associated with any food that they're consuming but they also should understand that there's a difference between a hazard and a risk and we can see that there are a lot of hazards out there not only in Pangasius been in any food item that we may
• 22:30 - 23:00 consume but we have to consume an awful lot of those foods in order for it to become a risk to our health it's been a decade since the first negative reports surfaced from the US and the stories have been kept alive on the internet and social media buddy mr. Huizenga in 2016 yet another damning documentary about Vietnamese Pangasius was made this
• 23:00 - 23:30 time from Spanish TV after this Spanish TV report aired the relentless stream of claims against Pangasius prompted large supermarkets like Carrefour in Europe to simply take it off their shelves Dokic el khazzani la movers repeated soup pourquoi some creatine Seba don calculus UNLV cansu Lisa credit wesson need a favor wind is under CL e they got
• 23:30 - 24:00 in Scalia this French documentary also from 2016 is more measured posing the question why the Vietnamese Pangasius is so much cheaper than other white fish the answer is clear say the producers the price is low because Pangasius can be stocked at very high densities as a short breeding cycle and a low mortality rate the seal upon gun elevation if adipose computer voice please kill more guts on suck come sir easy to do but the
• 24:00 - 24:30 French film goes on to make the same allegations as before the mekong river is highly polluted the fish is raised in dirty conditions and drugs are used to control diseases and to promote rapid growth it's a relentless barrage that's taking its toll there's been an accumulation of these claims over a number of years and I simply think some of the retailers in Europe of have said we're tired of having to deal with and respond to some of these claims by
• 24:30 - 25:00 focusing primarily on small-scale producers and their crude methods big exporters say the foreign media reports ignore the care taken by them to produce fish cleanly they just paint a very damaging picture of the whole Vietnamese industry when the news channel skills came here and did odd bust off theme or the bad information we didn't know about him we didn't know that they didn't my really beside Lee so
• 25:00 - 25:30 were the foreign reports on fire [Music] [Music] Chau doc has often been the focus of the foreign documentaries and news reports about the Pangasius industry in Vietnam it lies at what was the heart of
• 25:30 - 26:00 small-scale Pangasius farming using old-style traditional methods very different from the large modern producers like bin home or go to comb their rudimentary farming practices made for embarrassing footage and caused the whole industry to be tarred with the same brush let me know how much Papa has
• 26:00 - 26:30 given up farming Pangasius and now runs a wholesale business dealing in household goods the only thriving fish business here is the farming of a different fish the Lang na which sells for 10 times the price of Pangasius but the Langmuir can't be farmed cheaply and intensively on the same scale as Pangasius and as a
• 26:30 - 27:00 delicacy which commands high prices locally it isn't exported so it hasn't come under the same scrutiny I know days I'm like a mouse java.lang took us to one small-scale
• 27:00 - 27:30 farmer still raising Pangasius dong Jin dong makes a special mix of food for his fish he uses the glue powder to bind his
• 27:30 - 28:00 homemade fish food into pellets not an ingredient found in commercial food and feeding fish to fish is often criticized as potentially harmful as is the use of antibiotics to treat disease but dong says he rarely treats his fish with antibiotics he does give them medication
• 28:00 - 28:30 for lice and other problems but when we ask to see what drugs he gave him he wasn't able to help many critical media reports have focused on these small-scale farmers and their crude
• 28:30 - 29:00 methods of production without mentioning that small-scale farmers just do not export their fish anymore yeah now in fairness you can go anywhere up and down the Mekong and find fish or shrimp or anything made in a backyard sort of way with people smoking and skin-diving in the cages and pulling you
• 29:00 - 29:30 can still find that today but none of that is exported in the last decade the structure and production techniques of the Pangasius industry have changed dramatically small-scale farmers with old-style production methods have been pushed out of the market in the old days we saw a large number of small producers throughout the mekong delta but what we've seen over the last ten years is a huge concentration of farms it's a lot of processes now owned farms or by from a very small number of farms but these
• 29:30 - 30:00 farms are large and they're industrial and as a result the level of control over production from both environmental certification perspective but also from a food safety certification perspective has increased dramatically food safety today is at the forefront of many consumers minds and why campaigns against competitors can be very effective but there's a new and frightening practice involving Pangasius that many of us know nothing about food
• 30:00 - 30:30 fraud as we describe it can impact many people in many different ways it can kill you it can make you ill it can make members of your family ill it will certainly cheat you it can be mislabeling or misrepresenting food tampering with it or substituting an entirely different product and it's a growing problem it will cause a great sense of disgust sometimes you're eating
• 30:30 - 31:00 things you think this is not right it's not ethically right it's not morally right it's breaking my religious principles so it can impact us in so many different ways what I'm going to do is test to see if I can distinguish between these two varieties of rice I'm using a little handheld near infrared spectrometer professor Chris Elliott runs the Global Institute of Food Safety and has been an expert witness in criminal trials on food safety you can see now from this Asturias there are
• 31:00 - 31:30 many many different ways that you can cheat in a food system you can add chemicals and dyes that make it look more wholesome and of better value and then there's the other type of cheating which is were counterfeiting so actually what you're buying isn't genuine nothing's genuine not even the packaging food fraud the substitution or adulteration of food is the ideal get-rich-quick scheme for criminals
• 31:30 - 32:00 around the world well the calculations currently would say that if you add they might have money that's made in narcotics trade and people smuggling put it together it doesn't even come close to the amount of fraud that's going on and money that's made in our food system in London on Saturday the British government held an emergency meeting to discuss the horse meat crisis in 2013 professor Elliot led the British government's inquiry into the horse meat scandal when European consumers were appalled to learn that
• 32:00 - 32:30 beef and pork they'd been sold was actually horse meat the reason for that was massive differential in price between beef and horse meat even more worrying is a lot of that horse meat was deemed not fit for human consumption yet that was making its way into the food supply system right across Europe professor Elliot and his colleagues now fight a daily battle against dirty producers and criminal foresters who try
• 32:30 - 33:00 to trick us into buying food that isn't what it appears to be the Fisher that you eat often you don't know what type of fish it is you certainly don't know where it's come from and fish like Pangasius are ideal for food fraudsters it's incredibly hard to tell the difference between identical-looking whitefish Phillips there could be health risks depending on what species is being sold mis-sold but in most of the cases is actually driven by our cost so it's more like a matter of switching a
• 33:00 - 33:30 cheaper product for more expensive product and then overcharging the consumer even though Pangasius is commonly sold as dory in parts of Asia it's not related to the much more expensive high-quality fish called John Dory which is a saltwater fish found in coastal areas most of us have little or no idea of what we're getting when we buy fish like this even staff in fish restaurants seem to be confused about what they're selling is the normal freshwater fish the fish
• 33:30 - 34:00 is a Philip wish me luck oh it slips the earth did say one please send him to pathology we take off that skin I'm gaseous has been as far as we can see is more and more being implicated in food fraud low cost fish substituting for very high-value fish around the world tests have proved that up to 20% of fish is mislabeled and mis-sold as
• 34:00 - 34:30 being of a different and higher quality the advent of new micro testing technology should lead to a crackdown on the fish Foster's forget the DNA sequences and then it will be able to tell you what kind of species it is because different animals will have unique DNA sequences we set up an experiment to find out how much fake fish is really out there [Music]
• 34:30 - 35:00 [Music] whenever we buy food from shops supermarkets and restaurants we ultimately have to place our trust in the food suppliers and hope that they're actually giving us what we've paid for but sometimes that trust is misplaced miss labeling of food items is a serious
• 35:00 - 35:30 problem and it's showing up in many countries rudolf meyer runs the evolutionary biology laboratory at the national university of singapore though it has been done in europe has been done in some Asian countries and usually what is found that in terms of seafood somewhere between 5 to 20% of the samples that are being tested are mislabeled remarkably there's never been any testing of the level of seafood fraud in Singapore until now working
• 35:30 - 36:00 with Rudolf and his team we set up an experiment to find out we bought a hundred samples of seafood and sushi from randomly selected supermarkets and shops across Singapore and took them to the University for analysis we have taken portions of them and frozen them so it's easier for us to work with and you know all the information as to what the sample is written on here so this is what I'll be
• 36:00 - 36:30 using to then take some samples to extract the DNA from our fish like Pangasius being passed off as identical looking but much more expensive Phillips so before we start processing them what I need to do is note down which sample is going to which tube for the extraction because after this you're not going to be even you're not going to be able to see the tissue pieces you use what is very minuscule amounts of flesh
• 36:30 - 37:00 it's to determine whether these fish what the shops claimed them to be world seafood sales hit a record high in 2017 for all buying and eating more fish in the quest for healthy living but as we buy more there's more opportunity for fraudsters to scam us it's defrauding the consumer I mean it goes all the way to like taking skates and taking a hole puncher and punching
• 37:00 - 37:30 holes into skates and then selling them as scallops which of course is skate is cheap scallop is expensive but many consumers are still unaware of the potential fraud Singapore does have very
• 37:30 - 38:00 strict checks on food safety and is at the forefront of regulation to combat food fraud but worldwide few countries can claim to be free of the scam we're putting the food you eat to the test they've been using genetic testing for identifying how many seafood products are mislabeled in Singapore so for this what we did was called DNA barcoding this is essentially amplifying one genetic marker for
• 38:00 - 38:30 obtaining some sort of a species identification from any kind of a secret product we are now trying to assess how many seafood products are mislabeled and even global experts admit they can be fooled it can be difficult for all of us to understand how we can be cheated but we think we know what we're doing so I'm quite sure I've been duped as many times as other people have and that happens more more frequently as the fish has already been filtered or frozen it
• 38:30 - 39:00 becomes more and more difficult to identify the fish itself but the most common fraud and that's the problem with fish like Pangasius they're very rarely sold as whole fish so we've been looking at a supermarket product a lot of felice as well as some sushi are related product we're looking at interested in mystery seafood more mislabeling right so it would be more interested in in a way and looking at processed or slightly not the entire fish where chances of
• 39:00 - 39:30 mislabelling are not that high once you've chopped the fish into fill it's it's lost its identity the more specific a particular texture is or taste is the harder it is to fake it so when it comes to like a generic whitefish I think it's very likely to get replaced quite regularly or being used as replacement fish quite regularly but the extent to which it is being used I don't think it's known out and about on the streets
• 39:30 - 40:00 of Singapore people had rarely heard of fish fraud but was shocked when we told them I think in the fish he is it's not the fish I think is staggering can you actually discover what's actually going into the food you're eating as food fraud grows institutions around the world are using new technologies to fight it Chris Elliot and his team at the Institute of
• 40:00 - 40:30 global safety in the UK are at the forefront of the battle we all have a unique fingerprint law enforcement agencies will use those fingerprints to find perpetrators of crime and lock them up we are playing exactly the same type of technology to our food detective work because actually each type of food also has its own fingerprint so like any other foodstuff fish have an individual digital
• 40:30 - 41:00 fingerprint that can be identified using this technique so as I go into the fish sample there's a switch produced that smoke gets transferred into the mass spectrometer instantaneously it's difficult to tell one whitefish fill it from another but globally a database of fish fingerprints is being developed enabling researchers to identify them immediately professor Elliott and his team have yet
• 41:00 - 41:30 to establish the distinct digital fingerprint for Pangasius but when it's tested in their labs they can instantly tell which fill it is called and which is the outlier or odd one out the Pangasius within a few seconds using our nice fingerprinting technique that will tell you is what species of fish is it it will also tell you lots of other information i somebody tried to add some chemicals to it or somebody tried to bulk it up with water our fingerprinting will tell that these
• 41:30 - 42:00 new technologies will become more and more effective as the databases become more comprehensive allowing different fish to be identified but in the meantime fish fraud can only become more lucrative as the market grows the rate of mislabeling based on this experiment is about five to ten percent out is a hundred samples we provided the scientists were able to gather 77 testable sequences of DNA seven of these were found to be fraudulent
• 42:00 - 42:30 we found Kaplan row sold as prawn row flounder being sold as halibut Indian halibut being sold as soul Pacific salmon being sold as Atlantic salmon and Pangasius being sold as Tommen or giant snakehead a much more expensive fish Pangasius has been known to replace other of seafood products in the market the product was cauldrons maker dr.aman but it was actually genetically tested
• 42:30 - 43:00 to be a fog osseous well they are considerably different this is a clear case of mislabelling of the body in a subsequent test the Tommen showed a mixed reading but it's inconclusive and the sample could have been contaminated after the first test the process isn't foolproof yet but that's why fish fraud happens and is hard to detect substituting a cheap fish like Pangasius for the snakehead or Tommen an expensive delicacy based on our experiment it
• 43:00 - 43:30 seems that as many as 1 in 10 of the fish sold in Singapore may not be what they think it is is eatable or not it's treating it's a it's wrong to like lied to people in the current business well I it's not a surprise to me because people is chasing money this is something we should be concerned about I'm afraid the answer is yes because it's going on it's happening if you buy food on the price it's too
• 43:30 - 44:00 good to be true don't buy the seafood supply chain is incredibly long and complicated so it's often difficult to determine where the mislabeling occurred is it at the supplier distributor or retailer Pangasius producers like John recognize the problem but say there's little they can do no they use to name the MOSFETs who fish to sell a cheaper quality fish
• 44:00 - 44:30 but what what they call outside is what different inside once you sell the product to a customer it's their it's their possession right they can do whatever they want once it's left the factory in Vietnam the producers say they're powerless to prevent consumer fraud you cannot tell them oh you must sell this to this customer you must say this to this channel you must make it this you cannot do that right yet your responsibility is to sell the customer
• 44:30 - 45:00 does not pay you and instead the customer decision choice to do whatever they want with the fish so it's really if we we are in this scenario we're kind of powerless you've got to ask yourself where is that renaming coming from it's certainly not coming from the Vietnamese selling it as salt it's coming from REIT vendors in the final consumer markets which are relabeling that fish despite all the controversies the truth is we
• 45:00 - 45:30 need fish like Pangasius it's just the kind of cheap and nutritious protein essential to feed an ever-growing and evermore hungry world Pangasius is an Asian aquaculture success story and I think the rest of the world has to give it a bit more credit for being such an important source of fish had produced its such high levels of efficiency does that mean that there are no problems with the industry absolutely not like any food production system there are going to be concerns but the point is that we have
• 45:30 - 46:00 the institutions in place that are able to pick up and deal with those issues as they come and Vietnamese producers are confident they have enough customers to stay in the market whatever happens we're still here it's kept them at that moment people some some people that doesn't like some people that don't know about one cases that will fear that okay I would not eat this but if people for people who are already eating it they know how good product are they we say no
• 46:00 - 46:30 there's nothing wrong with the product we still keep buying and yep so we have law your customer we have law your market in the end it really all comes down to consumer knowledge and consumer choice
• 46:30 - 47:00 [Music] you