Seafood retailers don't want to mess with someone who just returned from several months in a remote bay in Alaska fixing up a fish processing ship. Such were my circumstances recently. I'm a little wild from growing up on an island in the Alexander Archipaligo anyway, but having parked myself among seas otters and sea eagles in the dead of winter boosted my moxie factor. So, you can imagine my chagrin on seeing farm raised Atlantic salmon being hawked in a local grocery chain as 'wild.'
Maybe my comments to the sales lady were a little blunt, and I appologize for that, but she sure tried to tell the wrong person that fish are wild simply if they grew up in a saltwater bay. That's the same as saying broccoli is 'wild harvested' because it used the same air and sun that forest do.
There was no reconciling our differences on the spot, so I went home and called the manager of the store. And as managers are a little more sensitive to customer attitudes, she pledged to set things right. Especially after I invoked the name of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, and the fact that they would take a dim view of their practice. Managers know how much money trade associations spend to promote the truth about their goods, and how ornery they can get about deceptive sales schemes.
I haven't gone back to check whether they took the 'wild' label off those pigs. I'm getting not-so-wild myself by the day. I actually should feel some kinship to fish who lived in a cage in a fjord in Norway, having lived in a steel box in a fjord in Alaska.
Not to mention the fact that raising salmonoids in net pens is now proven to extinguish all the wild runs of salmonoids within a several hundred mile radius. And is why Norway is now banning fish farms from 100 of it's own fjords. Which is why the Norwegian fish farmers are so bent on putting fish farms in other countries like Western Canada. Which is wiping out not only the coastal stocks, but the iconic run of sockeye salmon in the mighty Fraser River.
Labling Atlantic salmon as 'wild' is not only fraud, but it is helping put wild harvest salmon fishermen in all countries out of business. Just because the public doesn't know the ingredients of this witches cauldron, doesn't mean good, honest folk won't come along and stamp out the practice.
In England now, they have caught 80 chippies hawking some mysterious white fish as cod and haddock. That gets them a thousand pound fine. Incidences of enforcement of fraud laws in fish mongering are increasing rapidly. Why? Because the good fish are running out. The EU said they were going to cut the N. Atlantic cod quota 25% this winter, and the boats were already switching to other fisheries with so few cod left.
The market is starved for cod for one thing, and fish mongers are happy to replace it with cheap substitutes like pollock and whiting, which have very little protien. Fish and chips in the U.S. started using these species long ago, as in the U.K., because it was always advertised as simply 'fish.' As opposed to duck and chips, for example. But calling pollock, saithe, whiting, etc., 'cod' is another thing entirely. Cod has about 15% protien and pollock only has about three at the most.
God knows where pollock is being sold these days as a substitute for haddock and cod, whether Atlantic cod or Pacific cod. Market reports have it that traditional bacalau is just being sold as salt cod, with no reference to what kind of cod. But it was always assumed it was a good, healthy cod, not a kind of pelagic cod down the food chain somewhere from the 'good stuff.'
In fact, the Portugese have a name for their salt cod that translates to 'my faithful friend.' That's because throughout the last thousand years, the Portugese have been huge consumers of salt cod, and even put some spiritual significance to it, requiring it on Christmas eve dinner plates like we require turkey on ours at Thanksgiving. Huge cultural significance, so I wonder what the Portugese-speaking countries would say if they knew a lot of the bacalau is not a faithful muscle building friend anymore, but an impostor with little health-giving properties.
And to add insult to injury, the pollock and whiting trawlers in the U.S. are wiping out the king salmon (and herring, and squid, etc.) who are feeding on small pollock and whiting. We could be having nice big king salmon steaks with lots of omega-3 instead of worthless 'fish food.' Government management!
It reminds me of a movie I saw yesterday on young Queen Victoria. Prince Albert was astonished that the palace windows were always dirty, because the outside window washing operations never coincided with the inside window washing operations. Not to mention that they were also setting a table daily for a king who had been dead for years. Do we have progress here? You be the judge.
Maybe my comments to the sales lady were a little blunt, and I appologize for that, but she sure tried to tell the wrong person that fish are wild simply if they grew up in a saltwater bay. That's the same as saying broccoli is 'wild harvested' because it used the same air and sun that forest do.
There was no reconciling our differences on the spot, so I went home and called the manager of the store. And as managers are a little more sensitive to customer attitudes, she pledged to set things right. Especially after I invoked the name of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, and the fact that they would take a dim view of their practice. Managers know how much money trade associations spend to promote the truth about their goods, and how ornery they can get about deceptive sales schemes.
I haven't gone back to check whether they took the 'wild' label off those pigs. I'm getting not-so-wild myself by the day. I actually should feel some kinship to fish who lived in a cage in a fjord in Norway, having lived in a steel box in a fjord in Alaska.
Not to mention the fact that raising salmonoids in net pens is now proven to extinguish all the wild runs of salmonoids within a several hundred mile radius. And is why Norway is now banning fish farms from 100 of it's own fjords. Which is why the Norwegian fish farmers are so bent on putting fish farms in other countries like Western Canada. Which is wiping out not only the coastal stocks, but the iconic run of sockeye salmon in the mighty Fraser River.
Labling Atlantic salmon as 'wild' is not only fraud, but it is helping put wild harvest salmon fishermen in all countries out of business. Just because the public doesn't know the ingredients of this witches cauldron, doesn't mean good, honest folk won't come along and stamp out the practice.
In England now, they have caught 80 chippies hawking some mysterious white fish as cod and haddock. That gets them a thousand pound fine. Incidences of enforcement of fraud laws in fish mongering are increasing rapidly. Why? Because the good fish are running out. The EU said they were going to cut the N. Atlantic cod quota 25% this winter, and the boats were already switching to other fisheries with so few cod left.
The market is starved for cod for one thing, and fish mongers are happy to replace it with cheap substitutes like pollock and whiting, which have very little protien. Fish and chips in the U.S. started using these species long ago, as in the U.K., because it was always advertised as simply 'fish.' As opposed to duck and chips, for example. But calling pollock, saithe, whiting, etc., 'cod' is another thing entirely. Cod has about 15% protien and pollock only has about three at the most.
God knows where pollock is being sold these days as a substitute for haddock and cod, whether Atlantic cod or Pacific cod. Market reports have it that traditional bacalau is just being sold as salt cod, with no reference to what kind of cod. But it was always assumed it was a good, healthy cod, not a kind of pelagic cod down the food chain somewhere from the 'good stuff.'
In fact, the Portugese have a name for their salt cod that translates to 'my faithful friend.' That's because throughout the last thousand years, the Portugese have been huge consumers of salt cod, and even put some spiritual significance to it, requiring it on Christmas eve dinner plates like we require turkey on ours at Thanksgiving. Huge cultural significance, so I wonder what the Portugese-speaking countries would say if they knew a lot of the bacalau is not a faithful muscle building friend anymore, but an impostor with little health-giving properties.
And to add insult to injury, the pollock and whiting trawlers in the U.S. are wiping out the king salmon (and herring, and squid, etc.) who are feeding on small pollock and whiting. We could be having nice big king salmon steaks with lots of omega-3 instead of worthless 'fish food.' Government management!
It reminds me of a movie I saw yesterday on young Queen Victoria. Prince Albert was astonished that the palace windows were always dirty, because the outside window washing operations never coincided with the inside window washing operations. Not to mention that they were also setting a table daily for a king who had been dead for years. Do we have progress here? You be the judge.
posted by Alaskacafe at 7:48 AM
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