Some other Parmesan suppliers were found guilty of sim-
ilar cellulose padding, as well as adulterating the premium
product with cheaper cheeses like cheddar. As much as 20 per-
cent of hard Italian cheese made in the United States may be
mislabeled, as reported on Bloomberg in 2016.
Food fraud doesn’t stop in the cheese aisle, sadly.
Seafood fraud may be among the most alarming categories.
Approximately one-third of the seafood in this country is mis-
labeled. That’s according to tests conducted from 2010 to 2012
by the ocean conservation organization Oceana. Sometimes
Atlantic cod, which is severely overfished, was sold as orange
roughy; sometimes rockfish was disguised as snapper; some-
times escolar was masquerading as white tuna. Other than the
egregious breach of trust, why is this a problem? One exam-
ple would be if, by attempting to minimize mercury exposure,
you bought halibut but, thanks to mislabeling, ended up eat-
ing tilefish, which is high in mercury. A big reason mislabeling
happens in the first place is to pass off low-value fish for high-
value ones, or to sell illegally caught fish. For other products,
food safety issues could arise, such as products containing
common allergens when a label says otherwise.
Seafood fraud puts the livelihoods of subsistence fishers at
risk, because their legitimate catch gets undermined by the
illegitimate, while also threatening the availability of fish and
seafood for coastal communities around the world who need
it for basic nutrition. Here in the United States, where food is
abundant and available in greater variety, the big issue is, well,
being played.
Other adulterated products in recent years include olive oil
(cut with cheaper soy and sunflower oils); counterfeit manuka
honey (an uber-expensive sweetener from New Zealand, pop-
ular among health fanatics); and a well-covered incident of
horse meat being mixed into ground beef.86 how to be a Conscious EaterConscious Eater_02 PT_4th patches.indd 86 10/23/19 1:31 PM