Nuclear Technology to Deal with Seafood Fraud

By Sharon Atieno

With seafood fraud becoming a growing challenge facing consumers and small-scale fishers, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are resorting to nuclear technology as a possible solution.

Global seafood consumption has been steadily increasing, with an average per capita consumption of 20.7 kilograms in 2021, up from 9.1 kilograms in 1961. This growth is driven by factors like rising incomes, urbanization, and advancements in processing and preservation technologies, according to the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation.

According to the United Nations, seafood fraud ranges from substituting high-value species with cheaper alternatives to using unauthorised or undeclared additives. Other forms are selling farmed fish as wild-caught fish, marketing previously frozen fish as fresh fish, including less seafood in the package than is indicated on the label, adding too much ice to seafood in order to increase the weight and shipping seafood products through different countries in order to avoid duties and tariffs.

It can occur at any stage of the supply chain, especially as monitoring and traceability become more difficult due to supply chains growing increasingly complex.

Through its Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, the IAEA is launching a five-year coordinated research project to help countries strengthen food control systems to detect and prevent seafood fraud.

The IAEA will use nuclear and related techniques to build scientific capacity, ensure product authenticity, and enhance resilience and transparency in seafood supply chains.

“This IAEA project provides Member States with a valuable opportunity to collaborate in combating fraud and de-risking the seafood supply chain using robust nuclear science-based tools,” said Debashish Mazumder from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization, a key partner of the IAEA on sustainable development issues.

The IAEA’s Food Safety and Control Laboratory supports countries in applying nuclear and related analytical techniques to facilitate trade in safe and authentic seafood, offering powerful tools for fraud detection.

One of the most effective methods to counter seafood fraud is stable isotope ratio analysis of light elements such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, and hydrogen. This allows scientists to identify the geographical origin of the fish and verify whether it was wild-caught by reflecting environmental and ecological conditions in the fish’s biological tissues.

Scientists also use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to differentiate species, detect additives and uncover fraudulent practices such as selling frozen fish under a different label.

High resolution mass spectrometry helps scientists study proteins (proteomics), small molecules (metabolomics) and fats (lipidomics). This generates molecular fingerprints to detect food safety hazards and verify labelling claims.

Used to authenticate seafood, nuclear technology serves as a powerful tool to combat seafood fraud, enhancing consumer protection, increasing trust in food control systems, and supporting fisherfolk to engage in sustainable aquatic resource management.

One planned output will be to create reference databases of isotopic and molecular fingerprints for various seafood products, to feed into digital food traceability systems.