Original broadcast date: March 22, 2009

Are you getting what you ordered when dining in a restaurant that serves seafood? This is important on many levels, from honest business practices to endangered or protected species preservation to managing allergy risks. How can inspectors, and by extension the public, learn about the true source of their food?

A study published in the summer of 2008 in the Journal of Food Research International, includes about 100 fish samples from restaurants and markets in Toronto, Guelph and New York City. What they did to identify these samples is as elegant as it is brilliant. They used the Barcode of Life.

• Dr. Robert Hanner, Assistant Professor, Head of the DNA Tissue and Storage Unit, Associate Director of the Canadian Barcode of Life Network at the University of Guelph