Endangered shark meat on sale in US grocery stores, flags new research

A new study reveals that critically endangered sharks are being used for steak cuts and sold in US grocery stores. Despite bans and regulations, meat from shark species at risk of extinction, like great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead, is “commonly available for sale” in the country.

According to a study, the ambiguity of generic labels makes it challenging to assess the conservation implications of this practice (shark meat products being mislabeled), and for consumers to avoid high trophic-level species that often have high mercury concentrations in their tissues.

The research team gathered 30 shark products – 19 raw steaks and 11 packages of shark jerky – from shops and the internet in Washington DC, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. They used DNA barcoding to determine the species of each product, and compared these with the label under which it had been sold.

Mislabeling of shark products

The research, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, flags how consumers may be purchasing this meat without knowing exactly what it is, because of the generic labels that are sometimes used.

Almost one-third (31%) of the bought samples were found to be from four endangered or critically endangered species: great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, tope, and shortfin mako shark. Others were from another seven species, including the vulnerable spinner, lemon, common thresher, and blacktip shark, and the smooth-hound and Pacific angelshark. Only one was from the Atlantic sharpnose shark. 

The study says that 93% of samples (27 of 29) were ambiguously labeled as shark or mako shark but not as a specific species. Of the two samples that were labeled to species, one was mislabeled (e.g., shortfin mako shark labeled as blacktip shark) and the other was correctly labeled. 

Following barcoding, the team found that the 29 samples included 11 different shark species. Three of these species (great hammerhead, scalloped hammerhead, and tope) are listed by the IUCN as Critically Endangered.

The research notes that these shark meat products were sold very cheaply, with fresh shark meat costing between US$6.56 and US$11.99 per kilogram and shark jerky costing, on average, US$207.37 per kilogram.

Dr. Savannah J. Ryburn, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells Food Ingredients First: “The legality of selling shark meat in the US depends largely on where the shark was harvested and the species involved. The seafood industry has many points where meat can easily be misidentified and mislabeled.”

“By the time large shark species reach grocery stores and markets, they are often sold as fillets with all distinguishing features removed, making it unlikely that sellers know what species they are offering. The FDA only requires shark meat to be labeled as “shark” and not to the species (e.g., scalloped hammerhead shark), which diminishes the regulatory effectiveness of species-specific labeling that the Endangered Species Act and CITIES are based on.” 

Food fraud

The mislabeling of endangered species in the food supply chain is considered both food fraud and a food safety issue, flags Dr. Ryburn. 

“There are hundreds of species of sharks, and they all vary enormously in size, behavior, and mercury content in their tissues. If a piece of meat is generically labeled as “shark” the consumer has no idea if they are eating scalloped hammerhead, which is a critically endangered, long-lived, apex predator whose tissue contains a dangerous level of mercury for human consumption or a small sustainably harvested shark such as the Atlantic spiny dogfish which has less mercury in its tissue and is safer to consume.” 

“Sharks such as great and scalloped hammerheads are the ocean’s equivalent of lions, and we were shocked by how cheaply the meat of these rare, long-lived apex predators was sold; some samples were only US$2.99 per pound. It’s also concerning how many critically endangered species and species that contain dangerous levels of mercury that we identified in such a small sample size of 29.”

From this limited sample size, she infers that endangered shark species and species that contain “dangerous levels of mercury” are being sold at seafood counters more often than initially thought.

“Sellers in the US should be required to provide species-specific names, and retailers should avoid purchasing products that lack species-level labeling or traceable sourcing,” she concludes.