Can Handheld DNA Testing Technology Stand Up to Seafood Fraud?
When LeeAnn Applewhite started running DNA analysis on commercial seafood samples in 2015, 75 percent of them – species ranging from grouper and snapper to catfish and shrimp – were mislabeled. “We were testing thousands of samples, and some of it was unintentional mislabeling; it was a bycatch species with [species like] grouper or snapper but the whole load was not erroneously labeled,” said Applewhite, co-founder and president of UF Innovate | Sid Martin Biotech graduate Applied Food Technologies.
