Half of tested caviar products from Europe are illegal, and some aren't even caviar

Wild caviar, a pricey delicacy made from sturgeon eggs, has been illegal for decades since poaching brought the fish to the brink of extinction. Today, legal, internationally tradeable caviar can only come from farmed sturgeon, and there are strict regulations in place to help protect the species. However, by conducting genetic and isotope analyses on caviar samples from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine—nations bordering the remaining wild sturgeon populations—a team of sturgeon experts found evidence that these regulations are actively being broken. Their results, published on November 20 in the journal Current Biology, show that half of the commercial caviar products they sampled are illegal, and some don't even contain any trace of sturgeon. "The conservation status of the Danube sturgeon populations renders each individual important for their survival, and the observed intensity of poaching undermines ...