Whiff of 'fraud' as Eurocrats tricked into eating cheap fish in Brussels restaurants

Eurocrats have been hoodwinked into eating cheap fish, an undercover investigation into Brussels restaurants has established. EU officials are being ripped-off and their health put in danger by a "systemic” fraud in the Belgian dining scene that sees one in three fish dishes mislabelled. An investigation by campaigners using undercover diners and DNA sample analysis found that even the restaurants of the European Commission and Parliament are, wittingly or unwittingly, passing off low-grade fillets as delicacies. Investigators working with the University of Leuven sought to buy five kinds of fish – Atlantic cod, common sole, bluefin tuna, swordfish and ray – from restaurants surrounding EU offices and in Brussels' tourist quarter. In fact, they were served 36 kinds of fish – including four that could not be identified by laboratory analysis. The study, conducted with the University of Leuven, took in 280 separate orders from 150 restaurants. They included outlets with rave reviews on Trip Advisor and the famous eateries of Saint-Catherine, the historic fish quarter. "Everywhere we look, we find fraud," said Lasse Gustavsson, of the campaign group Oceana. “Imagine this was a car market in which they sold you a Renault and told you it is a Rolls-Royce. This is exactly what is happening.” He described the situation in the EU canteens – frequented by those who draw up Europe’s fisheries policies – as "inadequate and dishonest", with saithe, cod and hake served interchangeably and 38 per cent of dishes mislabelled.