Before she was admonished by the New York Times public editor for the failures of her now discredited story about mercury in sushi tuna, Marion Burros was sleuthing around Gotham spiriting fish samples off to the lab for toxicology tests. Time magazine, Slate.com, and The Center for Independent Media also weighed in on her misguided scare story and the results were far from an endorsement of her work.

So what’s Ms. Burros up to now? Well, today she’s writing about Country Of Origin Labeling (COOL). Those are the laws that already apply to seafood and will soon apply to beef, chicken, vegetables etc. They stipulate that products must be labeled so consumers know what country they came from.

Ahead of the expansion of these laws Ms. Burros set out to put 25 grocery stores and markets in New York to the test to see if their seafood was COOL compliant. Note-when she was crusading for public health with her Woodward and Bernstein-like sushi expose` she only visited 20 stores, so she’s upped the investigative ante with this one.

What did she find? Drum roll please. Three of the 25 stores that should have had labels did not and two of those said they were unfamiliar with the requirement.

As of Monday of this week “fish was properly labeled at all three stores.”

But we can’t ignore some of the other shocking finds her analysis uncovered like the fact that some of the signs contained lettering that “was small and very difficult to read.” Or that some fish that should have been labeled as previously frozen was not and only if asked would “employees behind the counter… point out the previously frozen fish.”

Thankfully Ms. Burros took her findings straight to the FDA who let her know that, “Since it isn’t a safety issue, a violation of this type would not be a priority.”

Foiled again— But at least we know someone is still pounding the pavement of Metropolis keeping the citizens safe.