An article in today’s Guardian newspaper revealed that diners in fish and chip shops in the UK may be eating endangered shark species without realising it.
The article says:
Fish and chip shops and fishmongers are selling endangered sharks to an unwitting public, according to researchers who used DNA barcoding to identify species on sale.
Most chip shop fish sold under generic names such as huss, rock, flake and rock salmon turned out to be spiny dogfish, a shark species classified as endangered in Europe by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s red list.
Researchers at the University of Exeter also found fins of shark species unknowingly sold by a British wholesaler included scalloped hammerheads, which are endangered globally, as well as shortfin mako and smalleye hammerhead sharks.
This highlights several important things.
One, all shark species are facing challenges of all kinds all over the world, including some challenges, like being served in fish and chip shops without anyone realising, that we wouldn’t normally imagine.
Two, because of that, we as consumers have to make sure we ask questions and get information about the food we eat and things we consume, to make sure that our choices are in line with our values.
You can read the entire article here.
Post written by: John Gardener