You may not be eating what you think is on your plate, reports Rose Eveleth for BBC Future:
From mislabeled meat to fake fur, a global industry has thrived for centuries by supplying shops and markets with fraudulent products. Is DNA barcoding the answer?
Investigations in New York’s Chinatown are a regular occurrence, but Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis’ mission was purely scientific. The professor of genetics at Barnard College sent his students out to trawl the markets’ open-air displays of exotic fish, fruit and vegetables, and purchase anything being sold as crocodile meat. When they brought the meat back and analysed it, they found it wasn’t from crocodile at all. Its origins weren’t exactly clear, but for all the world it looked suspiciously like some kind of python.
Slice it and package it in the right way, and one reptile’s meat looks – and may even taste – like another. From mislabeled crocodile to fake fur, a global industry has thrived for centuries by supplying shops and markets with fraudulent or counterfeit products.
