FAO GLOBEFISH launched its 2026 webinar series with an online session on “Aquatic Food Fraud: Impacts on Markets and Consumers and Tools to Fight it”, held on 18 June 2026.
The webinar brought together experts from FAO, the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, consumer organizations, industry, retailers, producer associations and transparency initiatives to discuss the impacts of fraud affecting fisheries and aquaculture products and the tools available to strengthen product authenticity across value chains.
The session examined key forms of aquatic food fraud, including mislabelling, species substitution, misbranding, adulteration, counterfeiting, and other types of fraud. Discussions underlined that these practices could undermine consumer confidence, distort markets, create unfair competition for legitimate operators, pose food safety risks, and weaken sustainability efforts. Speakers also emphasized the complexity of aquatic global value chains and the need for coordinated action among competent authorities, laboratories, industry, retailers, researchers, and consumers.
Participants discussed the role of stronger traceability systems, analytical testing, risk‑based controls, clearer labelling, consumer awareness, data collection, international cooperation, and capacity development in preventing and detecting fraud. The session also included the presentation of results from a pre-webinar survey, which gathered stakeholder views on the drivers, impacts and possible responses to aquatic food fraud.
This webinar marked the first session of the FAO GLOBEFISH webinar series 2026, which aims to provide a space for technical exchange and dialogue on key issues affecting international fisheries and aquaculture trade and markets.
The link to webinar recording is available here: https://youtu.be/xWMVkB5wJdk.
