March 10, 2013 – Jonathan Tycko was one of the featured speakers at the International Boston Seafood Show, which is North America’s largest seafood trade show. Mr. Tycko was a member of a panel titled Combating Seafood Substitution and Mislabeling: Facts, Fictions and Initiative. The panel addressed the serious problem of species substitute and mislabeling in the seafood industry. Mr. Tycko spoke about civil remedies available to combat seafood fraud. He discussed how species substitution could lead to consumer class action litigation, lawsuits by competitors for false advertising under the Lanham Act, and qui tam whistleblower actions under the False Claims Act. You can see his slideshow presentation here. Other members of the panel were Gib Brogan from Oceana, Matt Strickler, a staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources, and Lee French, VP of Seafood Merchandising, Price Chopper Supermarkets. The panel we organized by William Gergits of Therion International, LLC, a company that does DNA testing of fish samples to verify species accuracy.
