New fish powder certified reference material to combat food fraud

The JRC produced a CRM, EURM®-023, a dried fish powder for the species Gadus morhua (Atlantic cod) to help fighting food fraud. This CRM allows verifying correct labelling of fresh fish and fish products, following Regulation (EU) No 1379/2013.

Fish food fraud, explicitly seafood substitution and mislabelling, has economic and potential health consequences and additionally undermines fish stock conservation efforts. For example, it involves deliberately misleading consumers about the type or origin of fish, such as substituting a cheaper or less valuable species for a more expensive one. Food fraud in this sector is driven by the high demand for seafood and exacerbated by the complex, fragmented supply chains. 

Under EU legislation fishery and aquaculture products must be transparently produced, processed and labelled. National authorities conduct regularly inspections to enforce (EU) No 1379/2013. 

For whole fish, the identification can be based on morphological characteristics. However, as soon as the fish has been filleted and processed, other techniques such as DNA barcoding, need to be used for identification of the species. DNA barcoding uses a short section from a specific gene on the mitochondrial DNA that are compared to reference sequences to identify the fish species. 

EURM-023 contains powder processed from one fillet of one single fish. Fillet pieces were freeze-dried and cryogenically milled to obtain a fine powder. The fish powder in EURM-023 was certified to originate from Gadus morhua (Atlantic cod). Bi-directional Sanger sequencing confirmed that the two specific DNA-barcodes in the mitochondrial DNA (cytochromeb gene (cytb) and the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (COI)) are specific for this fish species.

The certified value of the CRM is traceable to the respective sequences deposited in the databases GenBank® (NCBI), FishTrace (EC) and Bar Code of Life Database System (BOLD).