Over the past decade, seafood mislabeling has been increasingly documented, raising public concern over the identity, safety, and sustainability of seafood. Negative outcomes from seafood mislabeling are suspected to be substantial and pervasive as seafood is the world’s most highly traded food commodity. Here we provide empirical systems-level evidence that enabling conditions exist for seafood mislabeling in the United States (US) to lead to negative impacts on marine populations and support consumption of products from poorly managed fisheries. Using trade, production, and mislabeling data, we determine that substituted products are more likely to be imported than the product listed on the label. We also estimate that about 60% of US mislabeled apparent consumption associated with the established pairs involves products that are exclusively wild caught. We use these wild-caught pairs to explore population and management consequences of mislabeling. We find that, compared to the product on the label, substituted products come from fisheries with less healthy stocks and greater impacts of fishing on other species. Additionally, substituted products are from fisheries with less effective management and with management policies less likely to mitigate impacts of fishing on habitats and ecosystems compared with the label product. While we provide systematic evidence of environmental impacts from food fraud, our results also highlight the current challenges with production, trade, and mislabeling data, which increase the uncertainty surrounding seafood mislabeling consequences. More integrated, holistic, and collaborative approaches are needed to understand mislabeling impacts and design interventions to minimize mislabeling.

在过去的十年中，海鲜标签错误的记录越来越多，引起了公众对海鲜的标识，安全性和可持续性的关注。由于海鲜是世界上交易量最大的食品，海鲜标签错误带来的负面影响被认为是巨大且普遍的。在这里，我们提供了经验系统级别的证据，表明在美国（美国）存在海鲜贴错标签的有利条件，从而导致对海洋生物造成负面影响，并支持管理不善的渔业产品的消费。使用贸易，生产和贴错标签的数据，我们确定替代标签的产品比标签上列出的产品更有可能被进口。我们还估计，与已确定的配对相关的美国错误贴标签的表观消费中，约有60％涉及纯野生捕获的产品。我们使用这些野生捕捞对来探索贴错标签的种群和管理后果。我们发现，与标签上的产品相比，替代产品来自健康种群较少的渔业，而且捕鱼对其他物种的影响更大。此外，与标签产品相比，替代产品来自管理效率较低的渔业，并且管理政策不太可能减轻捕鱼对生境和生态系统的影响。虽然我们提供系统的证据证明食品欺诈对环境造成的影响，但我们的结果也突出了生产，贸易和贴错标签数据所面临的当前挑战，这增加了海鲜贴错标签后果的不确定性。需要更集成，整体和协作的方法来理解标签错误的影响并设计干预措施以最大程度地减少标签错误。