Ten days after China's fish association introduced new standards that allow rainbow trout to be labeled as salmon - sparking nationwide criticism - the Shanghai Consumer Council held an open debate in which industry leaders and businesses were urged to respect consumers' right to know "about the products they consume".
Lawyers and aquaculture academics joined the two-hour debate with representatives from the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance, the main body that drafted and issued the new guidelines. The rules came out three months after China Central Television featured a massive freshwater fishery in Qinghai province that claimed to supply one-third of China's "salmon". The show prompted discussion about whether Qinghai - an inland province -should sell a large number of trout labeled as salmon.

The alliance has previously argued that in Chinese the word salmon could refer to both Atlantic salmon and trout. Atlantic salmon has a wholesale price more than twice that of trout, according to open listings on Shanghai's Fisheries Commerce Association. One of the chief concerns of labeling trout as salmon is that the latter is widely enjoyed raw as sashimi in China, while trout, a freshwater fish, may carry parasites, which are likely to be infectious to humans.

An online consumer survey initiated by the consumer council in Shanghai found that more than 80 percent of the interviewees said mislabeling salmon is "turning white into black", with 70 percent concerned that businesses would take advantage of the new standards to cheat them. More than 2,000 people participated in the survey in two days.

China is the world's third-largest consumer market for salmon, after the European Union and the United States, and the fastest-growing one, at 25 percent annually, according to financial services company Rabobank.