Tuna Labeling Practices on The Campus of The University of British Columbia

Abstract

Seafood fraud has been a longstanding issue among Canadian markets where species of fish are often mislabelled and sold to consumers under pretenses. Oceana.ca is a non-profit organization that has been at the forefront of uncovering the truth behind seafood mislabelling, running several thorough studies across Canada to determine which foods are most affected. Given the severity of seafood mislabelling in the region, this project was designed to determine whether the problem at hand is occurring locally at the University of British Columbia, particularly with foods labelled to contain tuna. This project divided several food establishments owned and run by two different operators to deduce whether a difference would be noted in the quality and integrity of food that students across campus have access to. Two establishments were chosen per operator, and three samples were collected from each establishment. For this research, the operators are referred to as Operator A and Operator B. To acquire the results, DNA isolation, PCR, and gel electrophoresis were performed on each sample. Initial testing using tuna-specific primers showed that only 1 establishment from Operator B displayed band separation in the gel, indicating that only this sample contained tuna. Because of this, the samples were run once more using salmon primers as a control. This resulted in banding, thus confirming the appropriate quality of fish DNA. NCBI’s BLAST databases were used to compare the genomic sequencing of the samples, resulting in matches for Lepidocybium flavobrunneum (Escolar) and Katsuwonus pelamis (Skipjack). Future research is necessary to determine whether this is a consistent result. It is suggested more samples be collected over a longer period.