Most unagi products sold in S'pore contain endangered eels: Study

Pick out an unagi dish at a local restaurant or supermarket, and chances are it contains an endangered eel.

- Angelica Ang

This was what a team of scientists from Yale-NUS College discovered, after analysing 257 unagi products, including dried, cooked and fresh meat, from various stores in Singapore.

They found that 99.6 per cent of the products contained genetic traces of threatened freshwater eel species. They published their research on Jan 9, in the journal Conservation Science And Practice.

Unagi is the Japanese word for freshwater eels, which are often consumed in East Asia as a grilled and glazed delicacy. High consumer demand for these eels, which belong to the family Anguillidae, have resulted in their being overfished.

There are about 19 species of freshwater eels, although it is mainly three species that are consumed in Singapore.

They include the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica), European eel (Anguilla anguilla) and American eel (Anguilla rostrata), said the study's principal investigator, Mr Joshua Choo.

The European eel is critically endangered, while the other two are endangered.

For the study, Mr Choo - a Yale-NUS environmental studies undergraduate at the time of the research - and his team collected 266 freshwater eel meat samples from retailers and online shops that ship products to Singapore in July 2023.

The researchers then identified the species of eel in each product by extracting its DNA and comparing it against known genetic sequences of different eel species.

But instead of European eels, the researchers found that a large proportion of eels sold in stores here were American eels.

Among the 257 unagi products for which DNA was obtained, 217 (84.4 per cent) were identified as the American eel.