Innovative genetic certification to avoid fish mislabelling: consumers’ interest and knowledge

Food labelling informs consumers about the identity, features and contents of food products, and may provide additional details such as handling, preparation, and safe consumption. In modern food systems, consumers have gradually lost contact with food supply chain and as their knowledge and involvement to food production decreased, uncertainty and anxiety regarding food risks increased. Also, the globalization of food supply chains, together with the increasing complexity of modern food systems and the recent occurrence of 'food scandals', have changed the consumers relationship with food and undermined trust in food safety and reliability of supply chain. In this regard, food labelling represents a concrete tool to assist consumers’ in making informed purchasing choices, because it enables a direct access to food information and provides assurances on food authenticity and traceability. Furthermore, food labelling has an acknowledged role in improving the consumers’ ability to select healthier, more nutritious, and safer food. The information included in a food label are regulated in Europe by the Reg. EU no. 1169/2011, which indicates the minimum mandatory information on a food package label including food identity, ingredients list, quantity of each ingredient, food additives, allergens, nutritional declaration, place of origin, date marking ("use by" and "best before"), cooking and using instructions. However, the information considered necessary or desirable in labels to support consumers’ choices have changed over time. For instance, consumers’ concerns about the environmental and social impacts related to food supply chain have generated a growing need for information on the various aspects of sustainability involving food products. Consumers’ awareness about food production processes and safety has grown especially about fishery resources. Additionally, recent research highlighted that consumers’ ability to recognize fish species is often inadequate. Various certifications schemes emerged for informing consumers about fishery and aquaculture products, such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC). Species substitution is a widespread fraud in the fishery sector with several consequences for consumer safety, fisheries sustainability, and marine ecosystem conservation. Different DNA-based approaches can be potentially applicable to contrast species substitution, but currently no certifications have been developed to protect the consumers against frauds related to fish species substitution. This research aims to evaluate to what extent Italian consumers are interested in a genetic certification scheme protecting from fish species substitution. To cope with this aim, consumers’ interest for this innovative certification was investigated through an online survey; then, collected data were analyzed with the decision tree (C4.5 algorithm), a data mining technique capable to analyze simultaneously the consumers’ features and habits, thus providing a concise and clear description of the decisional flow about interest in the introduction of the genetic certification scheme for fish products.