According to Vice Munchies, the seafood industry is fighting President Obama’s new fish fraud laws.
Set to take effect in January 2018, the law “requires importers to keep track of sourcing information for 13 priority species including tuna, swordfish, cod, and other species that are often mislabeled and overharvested.
The National Fisheries Institute and a number of seafood companies say that keeping track of all this information will be very expensive and have filed a lawsuit to fight the law.
Fish fraud shouldn’t be taken lightly. According to a report by Oceana, as much as 74 percent of fish sold at sushi spots in the U.S. is fraudulent.
Just last week, a study by UCLA found that 50 percent of all sushi served in Los Angeles was mislabeled. Paul Barber, the study’s author and a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said:
If we don’t have accurate information on what we’re buying, we can’t make informed choices. The amount of mislabeling is so high and consistent, one has to think that even the restaurants are being duped.
It’s important that we know which fish are being sold to ensure overfishing doesn’t destroy our oceans. In 2015, a report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London revealed that the number of fish and other aquatic animals dropped 49 percent between 1970 and 2012, primarily due to overfishing.
The sad reality is that all fish are in peril. These animals experience pain much like mammals and possess complex social intelligence; however, the fishing industry treats them as mere inanimate objects.
A Mercy For Animals undercover investigation at a fish slaughter facility uncovered fish being skinned alive.
Watch.
The best thing we can do to remove our support from the unsustainable and cruel fishing industry is to leave fish off our plates and switch to a compassionate vegan diet.
Check out all the amazing vegan versions of seafood available nationwide, such as Gardein’s fishless filets and crabless cakes. Click here for compassionate sea-inspired recipes.
For more information on transitioning to a kind vegan diet, visit ChooseVeg.com.
