Are you eating what you think you're eating?

From the Canadian Press:

Two American high school students have used unique Canadian DNA technology to identify numerous mislabelled food products in New York City markets, deepening concerns over the widespread problem of fraudulence in the marketplace.

From mislabelled fish to cow's milk being passed off as pricey sheep's milk, the Grade 12 students said a high percentage of the foods they collected as samples were not what they were said to be.

Brenda Tan and Matt Cost of Trinity School in Manhattan gathered about 150 DNA samples from foods and objects in their homes and neighbourhood as part of a science project with Rockefeller University and the American Museum of Natural History.

Tan said they found that 11 of the 66 fish, prepackaged and other food products bought largely at neighbourhood markets were mislabelled.

That included a specialty sheep's milk cheese that was actually made from cow's milk, venison dog treats made of beef, and sturgeon caviar that was really Mississippi paddlefish.

"You should get what you pay for," Cost said from New York before their findings are published in January's edition of BioScience magazine.

"We don't know where it occurs, but most of the mislabelling involves substitution of something less expensive or desirable, which suggests it's done for profit."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

And if you're interested in food, and knowing where your food comes from, check out foodtree. It's a new food transparency endeavor, and an offshoot of what we're doing at Plenticulture (since some of you have been asking :)