The chart below indicates the degree of recognition shown by the various operators interviewed by GIRA. The retailer and wholesaler buyers interviewed were asked to give the names of the seven different fish presented to them on photographs. The fish were all photographed by a professional and are shown within the "Pictures" page (see left menu).

GIRA gave a "1" for each right answer and a "0" for a wrong answer and for no answer at all.

From this chart, we can conclude that:

• the degree of recognition is surprisingly rather low, with an overall average of just 48%. Some buyers showed remarkable errors of judgement
• Greek buyers are relatively more knowledgeable than the other three, but still only with an average of 54%, followed by the Spanish buyers at 52%.

This result can be partly explained by the presence of red porgies among the pictures. This fish is more familiar to Greek buyers than their European counterparts. The recognition obtained for sea-bream and seabass are better, given that these are more common fish overall.

Only in Greece did anyone (2 out of 7) rightly recognise the farmed porgy. In the large majority of cases, it was declared to be one of the varieties of seabream, although several buyers were clearly uncomfortable with their choice. There is little doubt that the considerable similarity between the farmed red porgy and seabream will lead to confusion and the risk of both consumers and buyers being misled.

Worse still, for the farmed red porgy, it will be impossible to differentiate it clearly (and hence to valorise it) with its present colouration and shape.

When shown the picture of a farmed porgy, the degree of knowledge shown by buyers was much lower even than in the case of common red porgy, with an average of just 10% recognising it. Only Greek, and French buyers to a less extent, were able to recognize it. Spanish buyers did not recognised the farmed porgy quite simply because they had never seen one before.

A common opinion was that the farmed porgy presented on the picture looked like a "misshapen" sea-bream. It definitely does not look like its wild counterpart in terms of shape or colour. It does not have attractive colours. Moreover, one operator noticed that it had a big belly, probably due to fat, which would reduce the length of its shelf-life. We were told that there are currently some experiments going on for farmed porgy in Greece, Italy and France, and that the results are better than the one presented on the picture in terms of colour.