Sushi and bar coding

If you have not seen it, a very interesting article about a couple of hs students who took dna samples of fish in sushi restaurants and found that 25 percent of the samples were mislabeled: half of the restaurant samples and six out of 10 grocery store samples. In every case, less desirable or cheaper fish was substituted for its more expensive counterpart.

The technology they used, genetic bar coding, and the organization they send the samples to, The Barcode for Life, might have implications for species ids for exotic species.

The original article is in the NYT here.