Restaurants Not Serving The Fish You Ordered
Not only illegal and unethical but it can also lead to serious problems.
When it comes to seafood, it seems that most of the time, you're not getting what the menu says. The Boston Globe ran a series of DNA tests on local restaurant offerings and found that 24 of the 26 samples of red snapper, all of the 23 samples of white tuna, and a whole host of other samples (including fish labeled as flounder, Alaskan butterfish, baby cod, and New England cod) turned out to be cheaper species instead.
The Globe focused on white tuna and red snapper because these two species are both at the upper end of the price range. Since the fraud involves substituting a cheaper fish for a more expensive one, if you order cheap fish, you're probably getting what you ordered. However, it may not be exactly as described - according to the Globe, many fish described as "fresh caught" or "locally fished" are actually just the regular products of industrial factory fishing, caught in distant oceans, frozen, and shipped cross-country.
