Restaurants Plan DNA-Certified Seafood Program 174
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the getting-what-you-pay-for dept.
from the getting-what-you-pay-for dept.
Restaurants across the globe will soon use DNA technology to reassure customers that they are getting what they pay for. In recent years getting "counterfeit" seafood has become a big problem. In 2007 several people became seriously ill from eating illegally imported pufferfish that had been mislabeled as monkfish. From the article: "David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist and executive secretary of the Washington-based Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said he has started discussions with the restaurant industry and seafood suppliers about utilizing the technology as a means of certifying the authenticity of delicacies. 'When they sell something that's really expensive, they want the consumer to believe that they're getting what they're paying for,' Schindel told The Associated Press."
FooGoo me! (Score:5, Funny)
I hate it when I pay top dollar for blue whale and they serve me inferior dolphin.
Re:FooGoo me! (Score:2)
Re:FooGoo me! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually...that 'fish' in your sushi...is not what you think it is...
"report on genetic identification of ‘whale meat’ purchased in sushi restaurants in Los Angeles, CA (USA)"
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04/08/rsbl.2010.0239.full [royalsocie...ishing.org]
You can submit a DNA sample online to identify the 'fish' in your sushi :D
http://www.dna-surveillance.auckland.ac.nz/ [auckland.ac.nz]
Plenty of evidence out there that whale and dolphin meat from endangered species is sold as 'fish' both in Japan and exported to various countries in the world.
Re:FooGoo me! (Score:2)
This seems a little fishy to me. I can readily identify any sushi that is presented to me. Tuna, salmon, eel, etc. are all very distinctive in both taste, color and texture.
Re:FooGoo me! (Score:3)
Fuck you whale, and fuck you dolphin! [youtube.com]
Re:FooGoo me! (Score:2)
I hate it when I pay top dollar for blue whale and they serve me inferior dolphin.
Pffft. I all tastes like chicken.
Good to know you taste like chicken.
Re:FooGoo me! (Score:2)
Easy fix... (Score:2)
In addition to having no compunction about selling 'counterfeit' fish, they farm raise in conditions over there with pesticides and anti-biotics that are illegal to use when farming fish in the states.
We do have labeling laws here in the US, at least on fish...take advantage of it. Buy only US caught fish, and try to get only wild caught fish too....
Geez, people are still scared to eat Gulf fish, after the oil spill.....seafood that has been tested more than any other food in history for the most part....rated as perfectly safe, and yet people keep buying essentially chemically contaminated fish from the east, without thinking twice?
And so comes the market... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:4, Interesting)
More to the point, fishes that were once considered garbage bait fish, like squid, are now haute cuisine and are on every damn menu. Salmon eggs are often sold as fish-bait, but you put 'em on sushi and their worth is jacked up by hundreds of percents.
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:5, Informative)
More to the point, fishes that were once considered garbage bait fish, like squid, are now haute cuisine and are on every damn menu. Salmon eggs are often sold as fish-bait, but you put 'em on sushi and their worth is jacked up by hundreds of percents.
Different fish (and food in general for that matter) have always been a rather location specific taste. In many parts of Europe, Cod is considered very good eating, yet here in Australia it is considered rubbish. Kippers (especially smoked) are good eating in Britain, but you can't get them in many parts of the world. Eastern Europeans (and a few other European countries like Germany and Belgium and Norway) love smoked and pickled Herring. Aside from a few measily jars in the back isle of a supermarket it is almost impossible to find outside of there. The Russians have always loved caviar.
It isn't so much that what was once rubbish is now considered fine dining, but rather that due to multiculturalism, many foods that were once unpopular in a foreign country are being driven by populations that are made up of many more nationalities.
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't so much that what was once rubbish is now considered fine dining, but rather that due to multiculturalism, many foods that were once unpopular in a foreign country are being driven by populations that are made up of many more nationalities.
Actually, it's not so much about "fine dining" as the cycle of once-populous varieties being overfished almost to the point of extinction, forcing the mass-market fisheries to switch to different kinds of fish. The orange roughy craze of a few years ago was a fine example. You wouldn't have seen orange roughy on menus in the 70s or earlier; it's a variety of fish commonly called a "slimehead," and it's really ugly-looking, something like an angler fish. It also doesn't taste like much. That's why they marketed it as a "fine dining" fish, even though it's pretty easy to catch in huge amounts by deep trawling -- because they needed to trump up some reason why you'd actually eat it. Explain away that bland taste as "subtle, delicately flavored flesh," ship the fish to stores already filleted (so the customer never sees the whole fish), and never mention the word "slimehead," and it becomes the new market darling. Of course, as it turned out, orange roughy can live for over 100 years and they don't even begin breeding until they're 20 or 30, so they're incredibly susceptible to overfishing. Hence why you hardly ever see this "miracle fish" on menus anymore;10-15 years into the "craze" and the supplies are already dangerously depleted. On to the next fish.
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
I don't know.... right now, I'm dreaming of what it would be like to add that orange roughy thing to a turducken.
now THAT's good eating!
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:3)
I don't know.... right now, I'm dreaming of what it would be like to add that orange roughy thing to a turducken.
now THAT's good eating!
If you add ham to a turducken, then is it a hamsturducken. /ducks
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:4, Informative)
I've been fishing for over 30 years and I can taste the difference between Whiting caught off the Brisbane Bar and Whiting caught further up the sunshine coast. It's subtle, but environment always plays a major role.
Just on a side note, most Australian Cod don't belong to the Gadus genus, they're closer to perciformes. So they're not really Cod. From memory, they collectively get called Cod, like Murray Cod. You're right though, terrible eating.
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
As for me, I believe the most underrated food on the planet is a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Strawberry or apricot preserves, for preference.
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Normally I'd agree but given that there are some practical reasons to make sure you're eating one thing but not another...
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:3)
...for intentionally mislabeled "certified" seafood, sold at five times the price of the regular mislabeled seafood. Just like the claims of "organic" vegetables, I won't believe a word of it unless the seafood I'm buying is still intact and clearly recognizable.
I have a couple of friends and relatives who are on that organic foods kick. I tell them, that there used to be a time when all of the food was organically grown and had no pesticides, additives or preservatives. The average life expectancy was under 30. Fuck that, I'll take my chances with GM foods.
LK
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
Well, there is some truth to the idea. Before our modern food system, the one the organic advocates seem to so resent, famine and malnutrition were not uncommon (in too much of the world, they still are).. Food poisoning gets a bit more complected because if you're eating relatively fresh from a system that doesn't give any chance for cross contamination, you've got lower odds, but if you've got food stored, then you're going to want some sort of preservative. Food additives could go either way, since some additives like iodine in salt and folic acid in bread. I don't see additive as a group as going one way or the other since just about anything could be an additive. But anyway, an abundance of food provided by modern agricultural practices (not whatever organic is offering) certainty contributed to longer lifespans.
When you say 'worsening quality of our food sources' then I'd ask what you mean by that. If you mean the fact that people think food comes out of a box or a can, and no one views plants as food, then yeah, that's a problem. Sodas, way too much meat, greasy fried everything, sugary processed cakes and candies and other things with transfats, and high fructose corn syrup in everything because our government subsidized corn, ect., then absolutely. That is a problem here in the US. Not enough emphasis on the basics, on simple fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, herbs & spices. Everything has a brand name and a labeled package.
On the other hand, if you're talking about the 'organic food vs non-organic food' thing mentioned higher up on the thread, like the notion that there's a problem with using pesticides and herbicides and genetically engineered crops and artificial hormones and all that, then you're absolutely wrong. Those are all useful tools, the danger of which has been either fabricated or grossly overblown. I'm glad my country uses those things and lament the lack of understanding of agricultural science that has caused them to become 'controversial.'. I assume that since you say you're a European (based on your sig, Italian?) you hear people hating on those sorts of things a lot (then again, the same is largely true here in the US, but I get the perception that public opinions are even worse in Europe), but for food and agricultural issues it is Europe that has the higher percent of people who are on the wrong side of science.
Re:And so comes the market... (Score:2)
I can sympathize with that. I tell people this: organic food is dogma. Sure, you could cite the studies showing that organic food is not all it is cracked up to be (though for every one of these the Rodale Institute or some other usually well connected group makes another saying just the opposite), or show the successes of modern agricultural science, It isn't science, it isn't reason, it is appeal to nature, technophobic, nonsense. Yes, there are good things in organic production practices, like how we need to pay greater attention to soil flora, better implementation of biodiversity (both inter- and extra-species), and the use of biological controls (like using predatory insects or mating disruptors). But at the same time, it doesn't matter how safe (to your health or the environment) or sustainable any given thing is, if the big cheeses who law down the organic standards deem it unnatural, then you can't use it. That's just idiotic. If you find some way to produce a pesticide very safely, very cheaply, and without using much resources, then test it and find it does no damage to people and has very little impact on the environment, sane people would think that's great. But you could never use in in organic. You could, however, use the sap extracted from some toxic twig. Make no mistake, they DO use pesticides on organic food. Some of them are quite nasty, and because they don't work as well as conventional pesticides, may need sprayed more. So an efficient well studied pesticide is rejected in favor of one that is more harmful and less well studied just because it is natural. That I think is just dumb.
Fun fact: if you eat your daily recommended amount of conventionally grown fruits & veges, you'll get about 1500 mg of toxic, dangerous, poisonous, pesticides, some of which can kill you in sufficient quantities. Oh no, how could those bastards at the FDA (or whatever your local regulatory body is) allow us to be poisoned like this? Well, that 1500 mg? All natural, produced in the plant, by the plant, for the plant. Less that 1 mg of that comes from synthetic pesticide sprays. A few orders of magnitude less, ooh, scary. Anyway, because of things like this, if we were to go all organic, we'd either have to have sever billion people disappear, or cut down one crapload of rainforest and jungle to make up for it (as in, we'd need more than we actually have). In fact, if we were farming with techniques form last century, we'd have to do that too. If you've ever seen a forest, thank those big bad chemical pesticides and fertilizers. The inefficiency of organic is anything but environmentally friendly, and if is were to somehow expand too dramatically, it would be ecological suicide (not that that will ever happen because pesticides look a lot nicer when you're hungry).
And by the way, conventional agriculture doesn't limit itself. It doesn't say 'Oh, the organic people advocate crop rotation and to-till methods, so I won't use those.' The reason your average farmer wouldn't say something like that is because they're not morons, and indeed, both of those so-called organic techniques are regularly used by the big so-called industrial farmers. And then the anti-technology anti-science thing, ugh. Genetically modified food is safe. There have been hundreds of studies on that, a vast scientific consensus backing it, I mean, it is baffling that this is still up for debate. Yet organic rejects genetic engineering, when the GE crops used have cut pesticide use, the no-till methods they've facilitated have prevented erosion to the soil which in tern prevents fertilizer runoff into aquatic environments, and have been found to be safer (less insect holes in your corn means less fungal infection which means less mycotoxins). They saved the Hawaiian papaya industry, in fact, while the organic promoters are blathering on about how genetic engineering doesn't work, the organic growers were planting rows of the GE papayas around their fields because the GE ones kept out the papaya ringspot virus
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:3)
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:5, Interesting)
You damn well know what he is talking about. Claiming something was raised "organically" in the popularly understood sense of the word is quite profitable to abuse due to the fact that many people will pay more for it.
Good point sir!
On another note though, there may be some ambiguity. Some relatives visited from Luxembourg, and I recall at one family dinner we made a big deal about the produce being pesticide free, and the meat being free of artificial hormones, etc. When we explained the term was "organic", our guests spat out their food and all reached for their wine simultaneously, as they exclaimed "you grow all your food in shit?". As it turns out, they use the term "biologique" or maybe "organic-biologique". Very amusing dinner conversation.
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's more of a language issue. As far as I know, the organic standards thing is the same in Europe as in the US, it's just that in some European languages they use the term biological. In German the use the prefix 'Bio-', in French they use the term 'biologique,' and I think in Italian the use the word 'biologica'. So basically, Europeans tend to call it biological, but it is the same thing that English speakers call organic.
It really is a better term when you think about it, because organic in general relies on biologically derived inputs as opposed to chemical ones. And yes, they still do use inputs; the whole 'organic food is pesticide free' thing is simply not true (and even if they didn't, plants naturally produce an order of magnitude more pesticidal secondary metabolites internally then you're going to get from properly applied spray residues). They'll just use fertilizers and pesticides that are derived from naturally occurring sources as opposed to being manufactured (and yes this includes manure [which is probably good to add to the soil every now and again no matter what system you use]), in other words, of biological origin as opposed to chemical.
The whole thing is a still just clever marketing based on a big idiotic appeal to nature fallacy that serves no purpose other than to separate the gullible and the scientifically illiterate from their money (if it occurs to you that the origin of a substance has no bearing on its chemical properties, then you know more about chemistry & biology than the organic movement) and undermine the integrity of agricultural technology and food science in the public's eye for profit, but the term 'biological' is still better than 'organic.' Not by much I guess since all food is going to biological in nature just like all food is organic but at lest this says something a little more specific about the production practices.
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
The whole thing is a still just clever marketing based on a big idiotic appeal to nature fallacy that serves no purpose other than to separate the gullible and the scientifically illiterate from their money
Creative business literate food marketer like to plaster their food with as many misleading labels as a lawyer could defend in court, so the organic label is one good way to avoid eating food genetically modified or grown using hormone or antibiotics. In Europe at least, that is quite important, even to scientifically literate people.
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:5, Funny)
I eat only free-range vegetables
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
I prefer my vegetables grown in cages, especially my watermelons [instructables.com].
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
You're supposed to shell 'em first.
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:5, Funny)
I've been saying the same thing for years.
"Of course everything here is organic. Do you see me serving you a bowl of sand?"
"Mmm, basalt. Crunchy."
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:4, Funny)
I present to you 'organic' salt. [amazon.com]. Good for seasoning french fires, and making chemists' heads explode.
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
I've been laughing about organic foods since the craze really started gaining ground, but that right there takes the cake... Solar Dried Organic Sea Salt, naturally dried... Wow. $30 for 16 whole ounces even. That's a great deal!
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
Why on earth would you season a fire? Isn't it hot enough?
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
I would be interested to see 'inorganic' vegetables..
Stone fruit?
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
Re:Its Life.Jim, but not as we know it (Score:2)
hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:2)
The problem is that the substitute was toxic.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:3, Informative)
The liver(and gonads, and other organs) of the pufferfish("Fugu" in Japanese), in contrast, are highly toxic and are the reason why only skilled chefs should prepare it.
It's like going to a bar expecting to be served with Ethyl Alcohol and instead being served with Methyl alcohol. That extra "M" stands for "murder."
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not, you just have to test "monkfish" for pufferfish poison. While you're at it, you should test it to make sure it doesn't have stonefish poison, lion-fish venom, Kyphosus fuscus "dreamfish" hallucinogens, or any of the other millions of poisons out there nature invented to kill you.
Or, you could test to make sure your "monkfish" is monkfish.
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
People deserve to know what they're paying for. You open the door to all sorts of abuses otherwise.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:2)
That's an amazingly slippery slope you have there. You actually think it makes more sense to keep something legal and let companies lie about what they're selling you than to just ban the sale of it?
What happens when your substitute kills someone allergic to it? Who takes the blame?
Re:hmm (Score:4, Funny)
Personally I think we should encourage counterfeit seafood
Counterfeit seafood?
Could I interest you in delicious green patties, that are algae based, and definitely not made from anything else?
illegally imported pufferfish that had been mislab (Score:2)
Problem is "illegally imported pufferfish that had been mislabeled as monkfish" ("poor man's lobster,")
Translating: problem is vanity masqueraded as "pursuit of happiness".
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:4, Funny)
It also happens to be green
I don't care what Dr Seuss says, ham should not be green.
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:2)
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:2)
I would've thought you'd be concerned if such a mod existed for the sake of your own posts.
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:3)
Not to defend these suppliers, but keep in mind that part of the reason these toxic chemicals are used lies on your side of the Pacific. The US demands cheaper and cheaper goods, big buyers like Wal-Mart squeeze their suppliers to the max, and some unscrupulous suppliers respond by offering the prices Wal-Mart demands but replacing certain ingredients with sub-standard ones. Many of these toxic ingredients happen to be cheap.
The solution may lie in Wal-Mart et. al. demanding certification that the products are safe, and using only approved ingredients, on top of doing actual testing on those products for hazardous substances before putting them on store shelves, but that costs money, money Wal-Mart and many consumers are not willing to pay. Strict government regulation is the only way to have such testing/certification done and done properly, and that's something that again goes against general US culture.
You get what you pay for - and if you want good quality, you have to pay more.
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:2)
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:2)
It may help for the food part, to get at least the type of food you expect - but from the outlook you can not normally see whether it has been sprayed with DDT or not sprayed at all. There is a good reason DDT is prohibited now, as are certain other insecticides and pesticides, but you can not trust the farmers themselves to set up or enforce such a prohibition. Personally I also try to buy local food, but with 7 mln people on just 1,000 sq.m. of which half is country park, there is not much produced locally.
For other products, like tooth paste and toys, it's anyone's guess as to what's really in it. And that is where regulation is needed, and I don't trust industry to do it by themselves.
Re:illegally imported pufferfish that had been mis (Score:2)
what good is DNA for food testing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:what good is DNA for food testing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what good is DNA for food testing (Score:2)
yes its not their fault what so ever as millions of rusting, smoking, oil leaking fishing boats head out to spew diesel directly into the water every single day as they dragnet every single thing from a hundreds of square miles.
Find yourself a better paranoia! (Score:2)
Your fears are misplaced. Though plenty of pollution is (very regrettably) dumped into the oceans, the ocean is an extremely huge place volume-wise and the low density of pollutants in ocean water will not really affect your food.
(Well, there are a couple of chemicals, notably mercury, which are subject to biomagnification, i.e. things higher up the food chain get all the mercury from everything below them on the food chain; these can reach perceptible levels esp. if you're eating one kind of food all the time. Enough to be a little concerned but not enough to paranoiacally avoid ever eating any seafood.)
If you're concerned about chemicals affecting your food, you'd be much better off to be concerned about the pesticides, industrial pollutants, etc affecting land-based food sources (and fish from lakes and rivers); terrestrial water sources and topsoil have a much much lower volume than the ocean and absorb at least much chemical pollution. (And biomagnification happens with land creatures too.) So you really should consider never eating any land-based food again either.
If you're worried about nuclear radiation affecting your food, you'd do better to start worrying about the great unshielded nuclear reactor in the sky [lhup.edu]. Your danger of getting cancer from solar radiation is incomparably greater than your danger from Fukushima etc, even if you exclusively eat Japanese fish and stay indoors 24/7.
What (Score:2, Funny)
There's DNA in my fish? Disgusting! What is wrong with this country?!
Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:2, Interesting)
If you can't tell the difference, and arn't refraining from something for ethical/religious reasons, why does it matter? Whether you tell me that food is a delicacy from France or it's from down the street, it's going to taste the same to me. Either I'll like it or I won't. Stop worrying about this authenticity crap. You can't brand fish that way.
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't tell the difference, and aren't refraining from something for ethical/religious reasons, why does it matter?
If that's the case, I have some AAA rated derivatives to sell you.
Alternatively, fraud is fraud, and we have laws against it because allowing fraud is bad public policy..
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:5, Informative)
One word: allergies
For instance, I personally am allergic to ordinary boned fish, but don't have a problem with shelled fish. So if I order crab, it's important to me to know that it's actually crab, and not imitation crab, because one will make me sick, and the other won't.
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:2)
psst: that's not chicken, either.
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:2)
That's a fair argument. I mainly am bothered about abstract concerns for "authenticity" of food for taste reasons, but I am very sympathetic to concerns such as yours.
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:3)
"You can't brand fish that way"
It's not about branding. It's about price and sustainability. When enough volume of thing$ are fraudulently or erroneously labeled then thing$ either end up with an artificially high price, because supply of real thing$ is known to be small; or the glut of fake thing$ artificially lower the price of the real product because supply seems plentiful, although the supply is largely fake.
Either way a free market requires accurate information regarding supply and demand in order to work properly.
Also, some people have food allergies. Others simply wish to avoid eating certain species. Others just don't like being lied to.
In all cases fraud is NOT desirable. Regardless of your taste buds or mine.
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:4, Informative)
Besides all the smuggling and poaching issues (i.e. poaching endangered tuna species from protected fisheries and selling them as their not so threatened cousins), fraud issues (i.e. selling you bottom of the barrel fish at top quality prices) - the main reason that should concern you and everyone else is right there in the summary.
In 2007 several people became seriously ill from eating illegally imported pufferfish that had been mislabeled as monkfish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraodontidae [wikipedia.org]
(Maple) Puffer fish are generally believed to be the second-most poisonous vertebrate in the world, after the Golden Poison Frog. Certain internal organs, such as liver, and sometimes their skin are highly toxic to most animals when eaten, but nevertheless the meat of some species is considered a delicacy in Japan (as æè±s, pronounced as fugu), Korea (as bok), and China (as æè±s he2 tun2) when prepared by chefs who know which part is safe to eat and in what quantity.
Re:Maybe this is a bad thing (Score:3)
If you can't tell the difference, and arn't refraining from something for ethical/religious reasons, why does it matter? Whether you tell me that food is a delicacy from France or it's from down the street, it's going to taste the same to me. Either I'll like it or I won't. Stop worrying about this authenticity crap. You can't brand fish that way.
Personally, I think food should be labeled as what it is. If I buy something that says it's hamburger, I don't expect there to be 20 percent textured soy protein mixed in with the meat. Likewise, if I order a fish off a menu or buy it in a store, I expect it to be the fish it says it is.
Unfortunately, the fish industry seems particularly prone to this sort of mislabeling. Lots of types of fish seem to have "common names" that aren't particularly descriptive of what they actually are, yet they're allowed to be used on labels and in stores.
Example: I've seen a fish called "super white tuna" on menus at a number of sushi restaurants. I think it's pretty yummy myself; it can be so fatty that it actually tastes like butter. That's gotta be some exclusive, high-grade tuna, right? Wrong. Two problems here: First, this particular fish is illegal to sell in some countries because it can be so fatty that it causes (ahem) anal leakage. Seems like such a friendly-sounding fish should carry a warning label or something, no? Second, and most importantly, "super white tuna" isn't really tuna. It's actually a fish called escolar. It's not even in the same family as tuna. So why is this labeling legal?
Escolar isn't alone, either. "Rock cod" isn't really cod, for example. Seems to me this entire industry could use a lot more regulation and oversight, for multiple reasons. In the meantime, you pretty much have to bring a guidebook with you to know what you're getting when you order fish these days, and whether it's fished in sustainable ways. I recommend the app from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. [montereybayaquarium.org]
Bait and switch (Score:3)
Sorry to drop a downer on this story... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good news, folks! If you live in Massachusetts, it'll soon be easier to find out if you got the right fish from Legal Seafood than it will be to find out whether the right man was convicted by the state legal system!
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Access_To_PostConviction_DNA_Testing.php [innocenceproject.org]
Re:Sorry to drop a downer on this story... (Score:2)
Hey, with any luck that sort of argument will make it easier to convince people to get DNA testing on them.
Re:Sorry to drop a downer on this story... (Score:2)
You see what I did there.
Re:Sorry to drop a downer on this story... (Score:2)
And TFA is the response to that problem. When it comes to the wrong fish, we go from problem to solution in two months. When it comes to the wrong suspect, 20 years and counting.
Belief vs. truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuff' said.
New approach ... (Score:2)
http://www.funnyandjokes.com/chinese-fortune-cookie-gone-wrong.html [funnyandjokes.com]
Come on people (Score:2)
Man in the middle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man in the middle (Score:2)
IMO this isn't so much about protecting consumers from restaurants as it is about protecting both restaurants and consumers from corruption further back in the supply chain. It only takes one corrupt guy in the supply chain to introduce fake produce and if he is far enough back in the supply chain he can probablly dissapear before his actions are traced back to him.
It's like the diamond industry... (Score:5, Insightful)
They give you a piece of paper that says it's authentic, but there is nothing that ties the paper to the diamond. And why should we trust "they" either? We all know that it's all a racket with the De Beers cartel keeping diamonds off the market to prop up the price and we should trust them to give us a piece pf paper that has some sort of truth on it? We can manufacture bigger and better diamonds than natural ones, and even CZ are hard to tell from diamonds except by their unnatural perfection.
Now the fish market has taken a cue from De Beers. They're going to do DNA sequencing and print a certificate to identify species, but what restaurant goers know which species of fish they want to eat and which they don't? It's like the jewelry store showing you a diamond under a microscope. You get the illusion that you know something, but you don't really know if you're even looking at a diamond. And how does the paper DNA test report "attach" to the fish it came from?
Next it will be wine-marketing- "this particular fish was caught by Mr. X, a 5th generation fisherman, at great risk to his life and limb, and was caught in 234' of water in the Bering sea at 2:37am yesterday. It was prepared by Mr. Y, a fourth generation chef who has studied under Mr. Z for 14 years before finally being allowed to do more than cut vegetables. It was seasoned with the essence of ptanga from Zanzibar..." etc. Today it's on special for only $342.
The bullshit will just keep piling higher and higher until only the 1% can afford to eat fish.
welcome to red lobster (Score:4, Funny)
may I take you order? do you want the DNA Certified food or the mystery food?
What did he actually say? (Score:2)
"When they sell something that's really expensive, they want the consumer to believe that they're getting what they're paying for..."
He couldn't give two shits that what you're eating is what you paid for, he just wants you to *believe* that you're eating what you paid for.
DNA tests? What??! (Score:2)
thanks for the tip! (Score:2)
now I know that my ram's bladder cup really is from a ram.
Re:thanks for the tip! (Score:2)
now I know that my ram's bladder cup really is from a ram.
Just so it is not ram's bladder ice cream cup served on a bed of encrypted spaghetti.
Ratings (Score:2)
AAA = tested - definitely looks, smells, and taste like lobster.
AA = some lobster and some cod
A = a few drops of lobster juice 100% cod flesh
-A = imitation seafood can be anything found safe and cheap with additives, and fish juice added to make it taste like any type of seafood.
-AA = imitation seafood can be unsafe for children and pregnant women contains all imitation ingredients.
-AAA = imitation not safe for human consumption but sold cheap in supermarkets, and fishmarkets as an alternative to the real thing.
Just get trout (Score:3)
Just get rainbow trout. It's produced in commercial fish farms in high volume at low cost, so nobody tries to pass something else off as trout. It also tastes good and tends not to accumulate mercury, because it's low on the food chain.
Re:Just get trout (Score:2)
I second the motion.
Re:Just get trout (Score:2)
Forgive me Trout, but why do you need a license to kill if you're so low on the food chain?
"Counterfeit" DNA / Certificate (Score:2)
BP free seafood? (Score:2)
Imagine you order a razor fish (Score:2)
and they serve you a sponge monkey!
Because they can charge more (Score:2)
... for certified seafood.
Re:Confused (Score:2)
You thought correctly. Their "ways" are a cheap publicity stunt that is not going to solve anything. Since they are capable of fraud with the food you actually put in your body, nothing stops them from committing fraud by issuing fake DNA certificates. Enjoy your free-market-solves-everything cool-aid with that fake seafood.
Re:Confused (Score:2)