Tom Keane

Swimming in lies

After mislabeling scandal, should seafood industry be regulated?

FISH TALES are supposedly the lies about the ones that got away. Actually, it turns out, they’re about the ones that end up on our plates.

A quick recap: Globe reporters bought fish from a variety of restaurants and retailers around the state. The seafood —183 samples in all - was sent out for DNA analysis. Of those, 48 percent were mislabeled. My reaction since the story first appeared this week has been a mix of nausea, outrage, and embarrassment — the last because I feel a fool for my gullibility, which made it so easy for the seafood industry to put one over on me.

And, with the exception of perhaps some innocent cases of miscommunication, lies they are. The reporters for the story were careful to use neutral words such as “mislabeling’’ since it was hard to pin down blame. But somewhere along the food chain, from catching through processing to shipping and then purchasing, someone consciously substituted one fish for another. And that substitution, in almost all cases, was of a cheaper, less desirable seafood: white bass for striped bass, haddock for cod, swai for flounder. It’s the classic retail rip-off: selling plastic beads as pearls.

Nor were the Globe’s findings some sort of statistical outlier. Oceana, an advocacy group, did its own sampling last spring and concluded seafood is mislabeled half the time. A new study by Consumer Reports found 22 percent of fish in three states mislabeled.

What was most compelling about the Globe story, however, were the familiar names behind the deceptions: Bertucci’s, Skipjack’s, Ken’s Steak House, and Kowloon. (Equally striking were the places telling the truth: Ninety Nine? Wendy’s? So much for our easy assumption that upscale is always better.)

In one case, the risks posed by mislabeling are significant. Escolar is almost always, apparently, substituted for white tuna at sushi restaurants. That’s a problem. Escolar is the ocean’s version of really bad baked beans, with the potential to cause gastro-intestinal distress, including diarrhea and cramping. In fact, the fish is banned in Japan, of all places, for its toxicity (this, remember, is the country that celebrates eating the occasionally fatal pufferfish). The US Food and Drug Administration also recommends it not be marketed, but has never mustered the gumption to simply ban it altogether. Hence it is sold — most of the time branded as tuna (which it isn’t) but sometimes also correctly labeled escolar — to consumers (such as me) who simply were unaware of its hazards.

But aside from escolar, the damage suffered by consumers may seem hard to pin down. As with the plastic beads labeled pearls, if no one is the wiser, who’s hurt? Haddock, for instance, is a perfectly decent fish, even when it’s called cod. Granted, I’m likely overpaying. But otherwise, shouldn’t I be OK?

Maybe not. Some of the substitutes — such as tilapia for red snapper - are nutritionally inferior. Moreover, the worrisome thing about the rampant mislabeling of seafood is it suggests that there may be other, far deeper problems. DNA analysis can only tell us so much. It can’t tell us, for instance, where the fish is from, how old it is, or how it’s been handled. Badly sourced or badly treated fish can easily subject one to all sorts of toxins and diseases.

The Globe’s exposé is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, “The Jungle,’’ whose horrific description of the meatpacking industry ultimately led to the creation of the FDA. More than 100 years later, do we need the same kind of regulation of seafood? Free market advocates — and I am one — would like to think that the market could regulate itself. Legal Seafoods and Whole Foods, for instance, have long bragged about how carefully they source their products. Yet it turns out Legal mislabeled as well. And perhaps we could be smarter as consumers - although when cooked and presented in dim light, it gets difficult to tell one white fish from another.

The predictable calls have already begun for new regulations and in this case, rightly so. The political tenor of the times tries to find fault with any kind of government intervention. But the extraordinary degree of fraud involved suggests that there can be even greater harm when it is lacking.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on October 29, 2011.

What’s really at stake in council election

IT’S BEEN a busy few weeks for the Boston City Council. Members are trying to push Massport to pay employees a “living wage.’’ The body recently congratulated the Transgender Political Coalition on its 10th anniversary. The council is close to passing an ordinance limiting retail sales of knives, while it recently voted to raise the dropout age to 18. And a number of councilors are pushing to ban noisy nighttime trash pickups.

It’s easy to mock this stuff — small bore, penny ante, we pay 13 people $87,500 a year for this! — but an alternative view is that these are the core issues of public policy: economics, individual rights, public safety, education, and the balancing of the interests of people living and working in close quarters. Granted, it’s not as media-worthy as Occupy Boston, but for most residents, it’s far more important.

Elections for the council are just over three weeks away — on Nov. 8 — and, with three exceptions, they promise to be tepid affairs. Of the nine district seats, only two are truly contested. Long-time Dorchester councilor Maureen Feeney is retiring, and the two top vote-getters from last month’s preliminary - Frank Baker and John O’Toole - now square off. Meanwhile, Bill Linehan, in office for four years, faces a surprisingly strong challenge from Suzanne Lee. She’s from Chinatown; he’s from South Boston. Some read this as a referendum on Southie’s political strength; others as a referendum on the mayor (he’s with Tom Menino; she isn’t).

Meanwhile, Michael Flaherty - also from South Boston - seeks to return to the at-large seat he left two years ago to run for mayor. Flaherty’s run irks many. There are four incumbent at-large councilors, and for Flaherty to succeed, one of them needs to be knocked out. The speculation is that Ayanna Pressley, just elected in 2009 and not especially well known, is the most vulnerable. But the stakes are somewhat larger here than merely Pressley’s personal fortunes: the City Council has a problem when it comes to both race and sex.

Race first. Boston is what some call a majority-minority city. The council doesn’t reflect that at all. Two district members (representing largely African-American sections of the city) are black. One at-large member, Felix Arroyo, is Hispanic. Pressley is the sole at-large black member. Is she loses, the body is down to just three non-white councilors out of 13.

Even more striking is sex. With Feeney’s departure, Pressley remains the council’s sole woman. If Flaherty edges her out (and if Lee fails to best Linehan), the council will be all-male - understandable for a fraternity, not so understandable for a representative body. The puzzle is why and there’s no easy answer. Calling Boston voters more racist or sexist than voters elsewhere is an easy, but untrue, accusation. More likely, it’s a holdover from the days when politics was a family business, handed down from father to (usually) son. That combined with the personal nature of local politics - people vote for those they know or those they’ve heard of - make it hard for newcomers to break in.

Perhaps the Occupy Boston demonstrators might take up the challenge. This is not in jest. By my count, 60 of the 141 individuals arrested last week were Boston residents. Camping out and taking the occasional stroll around town may get you interviewed, but in the long run, change in a democracy only occurs when new people with new ideas run for and win office.

Stephen Murphy, the council’s president, observes that compared to other legislative bodies - i.e., Congress - the council has been a place of late where members have focused on results instead of personal battles. (This despite the conviction earlier this year of Chuck Turner, a councilor accused of taking a bribe.) And even as his police were arresting the Occupiers, Menino acknowledged that their issues - foreclosure, corporate responsibility - are the same ones that he regularly engages.

The Tea Party activists quickly figured out that for their anger to mean anything, they had to get elected, and they mobilized with stunning speed. They now occupy seats at all levels of government, making their voices far more effective than those who would simply occupy Dewey Square.

Originally published in the Boston Globe on October 15, 2011.

Will Obama Stay in the Game?

THE COLLAPSE of Barack Obama’s presidency may not be as sudden as the September disintegration of the Red Sox, but it’s been as unpleasant to watch. Hope has given way to recrimination. The soaring expectations of January 2009 have been replaced with futile admonishments for Congress to “pass this bill.’’ The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has lost the enthusiasm of the young and left-out who once funded his campaign.

On the last day of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson appeared on national television with a surprise announcement: “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your president.’’ Could the same happen this year? It is a speculation making the political rounds. Dick Morris, Clinton triangulator now turned Tea Party maven, pushes the idea, and it’s a notion that has been picked up elsewhere, mostly in the conservative media.

Obama, runs the argument, is too far down in the polls to ever recover. He’s flailing in the job, out of his depth and beset from right and left. And they say, he’s unhappy. He smiles little, he’s abrupt and uncomfortable. Even spouse Michelle no longer seems to enjoy the limelight. “These folks aren’t having fun anymore,’’ observes Morris.

And if not Barack Obama, then who? Hillary Clinton, naturally. After some initial stumbles, Clinton has acquitted herself well as secretary of state. Many Democrats are feeling buyer’s remorse, wondering if perhaps they should have chosen her four years ago. She would have been a tougher negotiator with Congress. She wouldn’t have blithely ceded cherished Democratic programs for little or no return. And whispering in her ear, of course, would have been Bill, whose eight-year term in retrospect looks ever the brighter.

Perhaps one can gauge a president’s desire for a second term by his smiles, but much of this seems dubious, a mixture of wishful thinking and pop psychology. LBJ didn’t pull out because the job lacked amusement. For one, the prospects for Johnson’s re-nomination looked tough; he faced internal challenges from both Gene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.

More importantly, Johnson believed that the great issue of the day - Vietnam - required him to make decisions unfettered by political considerations. War-making is an area where presidents, as commanders in chief, have nearly unilateral authority. Indeed, in the same speech in which he took a pass on a second term, LBJ unveiled a plan to halt US raids in North Vietnam in a bid to kick off peace talks.

But Obama’s problems are domestic, not international. Even if he were to pull out for some grand purpose, it’s hard to imagine what that would be. It’s not as if Republicans would suddenly rally around a jobs bill merely because Obama exited the race. Far from it. As a lame duck perceived as a quitter, his influence would simply evaporate.

Nor does Obama face any meaningful challenges from within the Democratic Party. So the case for Obama to leave is that he does it for the good of the party, essentially conceding it is impossible for him to win. It’s here where the analogy to the Red Sox breaks down. The Sox lost at the end of their season; Obama’s campaign has yet to begin.

Granted, some polls show that a generic Republican could beat Obama. But the problem for Republicans is that they have to move from the generic to the specific, and right now the president’s campaign team has to be chortling. The Republicans are at each other’s throats, desperately casting about for a candidate. Mitt Romney is detested by many in the party, Michele Bachmann has faded, Rick Perry is stumbling badly and Chris Christie keeps saying no (and appears to mean it). One on one, Obama is a formidable campaigner, and each of the GOP’s candidates has serious flaws. All the support Obama may have lost from his base over the last year or so will likely return to the fold when the stark choice comes down to him versus the Republican nominee.

Who knows what’s in the president’s head. Maybe he really is so discouraged that he follows LBJ’s example. But emotion aside, logic suggests he press on.

Originally published in the Boston Globe.