FDA cracks down on 'white roughy' labelFDA cracks down on 'white roughy' label

Alan J. Liddle

WASHINGTON White roughy, like the great pale whale of author Herman Melville’s classic “Moby Dick,” is the stuff of fiction, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Restaurateurs and retailers using the term "white roughy" to describe dishes made with the fish also known as basa should immediately cease and desist, the FDA indicated in a recent letter to the Better Seafood Bureau.

The BSB is the self-policing arm created by the National Fisheries Institute trade group of McLean, Va., that represents the suppliers of about 75 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States.

Lisa Weddig, BSB secretary, recently inquired about the propriety of calling basa white roughy. “The name white roughy has begun to crop up on restaurant menus and at fish counters nationwide but especially in California,” BSB officials noted in a statement intended to share with the industry the FDA’s response to Weddig’s inquiry.

Spring C. Randolph, consumer safety officer for the seafood division of the office of food safety within the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a reply to Weddig that the FDA believes that “white roughy” or “white ruffy” is “not an acceptable market name for the basa fish species.”

“Fish that are classified as ‘roughies,’ such as orange roughy, are in the Trachichthyidae family and this fish commands a higher value in the marketplace. Basa is a different fish, which is scientifically classified in the Pangasiidae family,” Randolph wrote. “We believe that marketing basa or any fish in the Pangasiidae family as ‘white roughy’ would be misleading to the consumer.”

Restaurateurs and retailers desiring to give their seafood only approved market names may check out the FDA’s list of such proper monikers at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/seaguid7.html.

“There is a difference between genuine confusion and marketing designed to confuse,” the BSB’s Weddig said. “We want to educate people who may have a legitimate misunderstanding about what to call a certain fish and weed out those who are perpetrating a fraud.”

Contact Alan J. Liddle at [email protected].