Restaurants Plan DNA-Certified Seafood Program 174
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: (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: (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: (Score:3)
Fuck you whale, and fuck you dolphin! [youtube.com]
Re: (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: (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 scar
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: (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: (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: (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: (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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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: (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: (Score:2)
Re: (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 so
Re: (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
Re: (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: (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: (Score:2)
I prefer my vegetables grown in cages, especially my watermelons [instructables.com].
Re: (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: (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: (Score:2)
Why on earth would you season a fire? Isn't it hot enough?
Re: (Score:2)
I would be interested to see 'inorganic' vegetables..
Stone fruit?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the substitute was toxic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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
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: (Score:2)
Re: (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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would've thought you'd be concerned if such a mod existed for the sake of your own posts.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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 locall
Re: (Score:2)
what good is DNA for food testing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:what good is DNA for food testing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (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 t
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: (Score:2)
psst: that's not chicken, either.
Re: (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: (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
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: (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
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: (Score:2)
Hey, with any luck that sort of argument will make it easier to convince people to get DNA testing on them.
Re: (Score:2)
You see what I did there.
Re: (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: (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: (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 supermark
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: (Score:2)
I second the motion.
Re: (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: (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: (Score:2)