Unknowlingly consuming endangered tuna

Saturday, November 21, 2009 - 07:56 in Biology & Nature

While most of us would never willingly consume a highly endangered species, doing so might be as easy as plucking sushi from a bento box. New genetic detective work from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History shows that bluefin tuna is routinely plated in sushi bars sampled in New York and Colorado. A quarter of what was labelled as tuna on sushi menus was bluefin, and some was even escolar, a waxy, buttery fish often labelled 'white tuna' that is banned for sale in Japan and Italy because it can cause gastrointestinal distress. The new research is published in PLoS ONE...

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