Seafood Fraud

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Consuming seafood has become an essential part of our normal diet and even the AHA (American Heart Association) has recommended eating two seafood meals per week.  Recently, a study performed by a non-profit ocean conservative group called “Oceana” has found many fish, such as snapper and white tuna, to be mislabeled and actually replaced with harmful substitutes such as tilapia and escolar. Oceana employees and volunteers purchased around 1,200 samples from 674 retail stores in 21 states, from 2010 to 2012. DNA results from the study showed that 87% of snapper samples and 57% of tuna samples were mislabeled. Overall, the worst violators of this mislabeling came from sushi venues, where the fish mislabeling was up to 74%, while restaurants had 38% and grocery stores with 18%. Also, certain regions had a higher percentage of offense, with Southern California with 52% mislabeling and Houston/Austin with 49%.

This causes various problems related to health of the consumers, lack of oversight, unfairness to honest parties in the supply chain and fraudulent advertising.  In terms of health, substituted fishes usually are associated with health advisories and sometimes, severe dangers. For example, the Escolar, mislabeled as “white tuna” nearly 84%, is actually banned in many countries such as Italy and Japan. This is due to it containing a natural toxin that can cause serious gastrointestinal effects when ingesting several ounces. As for lack of oversight, the seafood industry has become increasingly complex and is a part of a global network that makes it extremely difficult to track the movement of the fish all the way from the fishing boat up until the final retail store. Only about 2% of all imported seafood is inspected by the FDA and a majority of them are sold in fillet form, processed or in sauce, which causes identifying the fish to be extremely difficult. Being able to pinpoint at which step in the process, the fish was replaced by a substitute is quite a challenge. This mislabeling not only cheats the customer but also the honest fisherman or suppliers who stick to the rules.

There is no clear solution to this mislabeling and fraudulent activity, but it is clear that the global network of seafood supply needs to create a tracing system of some sort that would be able to track the movements of the fish from beginning to end. It is completely unfair for consumers to be paying money to be eating potentially harmful food. If government is unable to intervene or present this type of solution, the customers can take extra precautions by becoming more inquisitive into the species and origin of the fish they are looking to purchase. Becoming educated about the fish they are selling and asking the retailers questions such as if they were wild or farmed, can motivate a more cautious attitude throughout the supply chain.

Ex-mayor Gambles 1 Billion Dollars

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Maureen O'Conner, former mayor of San Diego has had a gambling addiction for the past nine years, having won and lost 1 billion dollars. Initially, she went through her personal funds to support her addiction by liquidated her savings, selling real estate holdings, auctioning valuables and taking out a third mortgage. When she needed more to keep up with her habits, she embezzled over two million dollars from her late husband's  foundation, in which she was a member of the board of trustees.

In court, O'Conner's attorney defended the case by stating that she had a stroke and tumor growing in her brain in 2011, which impaired her judgement to make proper decisions. The court ruled that she would pay the foundation back its two million dollars, pay owed taxes and get treatment for her addiction. If she fulfills the conditions of this deferred prosecution, the court will drop the prosecution in two years.

In this case, is it ethical that O'Conner was let off so easily due to her health condition? Her gambling habits were from nine years ago, long before her stroke. The foundation was a supporter of various philanthropies such  as City of Hope, the Alzheimer's Association, Sharp Healthcare, Little Wishes Foundation, San Diego Hospice and the John Burton Foundation. Due to her actions, the foundation allegedly went bankrupt and many people may have been negatively impacted. I think that the court let her off too easy without any repercussions. However, it will be interesting to see how she manages to fulfill the conditions of her deferred prosecution since she has depleted her funds and is unable to work due to her medical conditions.

Breast Milk for Sale on the Internet

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In today's NYTimes, there was an article on the growing sales of human breast milk on the Internet. Due to the overwhelming demand for natural breast milk, established banks that carry safe, tested milk are limited to distributing their supplies to those who are most in need. As a result, other parents are forced to look into alternative sources on the Internet that are not always reliable. While it is a known fact that breast milk is extremely beneficial for newborns, purchasing milk from strangers on the Internet can potentially lead to health risks for infants. Bodily fluids can hold harmful bacteria and viruses that can pose threat to babies that have underdeveloped immune systems. In addition, substances that are dangerous to newborns such as alcohol, marijuana and certain medications can also be carried through breast milk. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends individuals against feeding babies breast milk acquired directly from individuals or online.

With the alternative of baby formula, is it ethical for parents of healthy babies to be putting their newborns at risk by feeding them breast milk from unidentified sources? It is understandable for high-risk, premature babies who need breast milk for survival to be put on a breast milk diet through a reliable bank. However, it may be counterproductive for most parents who go to these extremes to benefit their children. In addition, it is unfair for parents of healthy babies to tap into the scarce supply of breast milk when there are very sick babies in dire need of this resource.

Is a Fetus a Person?

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This CNN article covers a story about a Catholic hospital in Colorado that is involved in a lawsuit that deals with both ethics and morals. In 2006, a 28 week pregnant woman bearing a set of twins went into cardiac arrest in the Emergency Room of St. Thomas More Hospital. Both the mother and twins died in this tragedy. After the event, the woman's husband, Jeremy Stodgill proceeded to sue the hospital for wrongful death of his wife and unborn twins. The hospital's lawyers defended the case by referencing Colorado's Wrongful Death Act, which does not consider fetuses to be persons. This lawsuit soon gained a lot of attention and criticism for hypocrisy from the public and media, which caused the owners of the hospital, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) to respond. According to CHI representatives and the state's bishops, they were not aware that their attorneys were referencing the Wrongful Death Act, which clearly contradicts the Catholic belief that human life starts during conception. Furthermore, they promised that the hospital's attorneys would not reference the act in the future.

The moral issue of this story and a large factor of this lawsuit is whether fetuses should be considered persons or not. Clearly, there are opposing views from the State of Colorado and the Catholic church. If the hospital was not affiliated with any religion, it would not have received the mass criticism that this particular hospital did. The main reason why the media responded to this story is because the organization's beliefs were not aligned with their actions. Morals are deeply rooted by factors such as culture or religion and defines people's characters.  There is no right or wrong answer to whether the unborn twins should have been considered persons or not because people have different morals and viewpoints on this topic. However, the contradiction of CHI's religious beliefs and their attorney's actions in court stirs up an ethical issue.

The ethical question in this story is whether CHI was indeed unaware of the fact that their attorneys were citing the Wrongful Death Act. Some may argue that a business is a business and upper management of CHI could have agreed for their attorneys to refer to the Wrongful Death Act, even if it was against their religious beliefs. After all, even hospitals are companies and would lose a large sum of money on a lawsuit as major as this one. The truth may never be revealed, but I personally find it hard to believe that the organization was completely in the dark about the actions that their attorneys were taking.