Nationwide Brazilian governmental forensic programme reveals seafood mislabelling trends and rates using DNA barcoding

- Nationwide governmental Brazilian program analyzed 255 seafood products.
- A mislabeling rate of 17.3% (44 samples) was recovered.
- Mislabelling rates are similar between Brazilian geopolitical regions.
- Financial and regulatory enforcements penalties applied to non-compliant products.
- Forensic governmental programs may lead to more sustainable and trusted fisheries.

The Brazilian federal government has adopted DNA barcoding (i.e. analysing about 650 base pairs of the COI mitochondrial gene) as a standardised method in a nationwide programme for routine and systematic regulation of processed seafood products. Here, we report rates and trends of a forensic programme which sampled products with twenty-eight commercial fish names (N = 255) confiscated by official governmental officers from 14 states, and which also included imports from 8 countries. A mislabelling rate of 17.3% (44 samples) was recovered when comparing the DNA barcode identification of fish products to the official Brazilian list of species and commercial names. No statistical differences in mislabelling rates between geopolitical regions was detected (G = 2.4, N = 5, p = 0.66). The number of mislabelled samples was not correlated to samples size per commercial name (r = 0.34, N = 29, p = 0.07), but instead, mislabelling was positively correlated to the number of species detected (r = 0.75, N = 29, p < 0.00), suggesting that more surveillance should be given to species with less well-defined commercial names. The programme resulted in financial penalties being applied according to the amount of mislabelling detected. Moreover, companies caught selling mislabelled products were further inspected until the company proved that their production was normalised according to Brazilian labelling regulations. A systematic nationwide forensic governmental programme may lead to more sustainable and trusted fisheries activities allowing consumers to make informed choices when buying seafood products.