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Restaurants Plan DNA-Certified Seafood Program
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."
I hate it when I pay top dollar for blue whale and they serve me inferior dolphin.
...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.
"Just like the claims of "organic" vegetables,"
I would be interested to see 'inorganic' vegetables...
Personally I think we should encourage counterfeit seafood; for example, find an indistinguishable but sustainable substitute for shark fin and that's a good thing, I won't lose any sleep over social-climbing Chinese middle class consumers thinking they're buying genuine shark fins when they're not.
Problem is "illegally imported pufferfish that had been mislabeled as monkfish" ("poor man's lobster,")
Translating: problem is vanity masqueraded as "pursuit of happiness".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
between the Gulf of Mexico BP oil spill, Fukushima disaster, and untold other spills and illegal dumping in to the ocean i no longer trust seafood from any part of the ocean anymore, i hold no grudge against the seafood industry because it is not their fault that the ocean is where all the pollution eventually ends up since both shit and water flows down hill. i feel bad for both them and the ocean and those that like seafood (i like seafood) but the ocean i feel is no longer safe to eat from...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
There's DNA in my fish? Disgusting! What is wrong with this country?!
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.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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
Nuff' said.
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
Nope. That is just old fashioned fraud killing people. There has been a lot of this lately from one nation. From toxic toothpaste to lead painted toys... Simple solution. Buy local food that still looks like the food... It also happens to be green, but I do it anyway.
Lets do this for politicians too.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I thought that only the government could protect consumers from the evil, evil business owners. How is it possible that a group of capitalists are getting together and finding a ways to eliminate a problem and better serve their customers without some bureaucrat forcing them to do it?
http://www.funnyandjokes.com/chinese-fortune-cookie-gone-wrong.html
Have gnu, will travel.
To believe !!! ...What about to get ???
If you don't want to take chances with your seafood then you shouldn't be playing "Wheel of Fish". Come on people, this isn't rocket science.
Monstar L
The problem with the man in the middle is the man in the middle. If I don't trust a restaurant to serve me the seafood I want, how can I trust them to not falsify the DNA information? This is an absolutely stupid idea and does nothing to "reassure" people. Stop insisting you want $5.99 all you can eat lobster, and eat somewhere decent for a change. Until you can bring your own independent rapid-test kit and do your own test before your food gets cold, guess what - you still have to trust the damned restaurant.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So what will this change? Now instead of people believing lying seafood suppliers, they will believe lying DNA testers. And they will believe them even more, because of the old "authority" fallacy.
PROTIP: Unless you personally know somebody, you can't say anything about their trustworthiness. Let alone expecting an absolute trustworthiness. And even if... trust is a game of luck and chances.
The only thing you can say, is that if somebody says he's an "authority" or that you can trust him, then you should be very wary! ^^
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.
may I take you order? do you want the DNA Certified food or the mystery food?
... for certified seafood.
"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.
The fact you don't mind being scammed is irrelevant to everyone else. It's still fraud, in particular "bait and switch" style fraud.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It also happens to be green
I don't care what Dr Seuss says, ham should not be green.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
poison, poison, tasty fish!!!
It also happens to be green
I don't care what Dr Seuss says, ham should not be green.
Posting anonymously as I'm moderating on this thread and wishing there was a '-1, Moron' mod.
oh.. - It's the food that gets tested. Okay, I'm for it then.
Snake scale.
But would you eat them in a box?
now I know that my ram's bladder cup really is from a ram.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I would've thought you'd be concerned if such a mod existed for the sake of your own posts.
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If they will give seafood a honest rating system?
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.
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.
Not to mention honey. Apparently it's bad enough to actually be banned. They're getting around the ban by shipping to India and importing from there. An easy solution to that would be to also ban honey from India. Or better yet, buy your honey from a guy who owns beehives. And ideally, in jars you saw him fill a second ago from inside an angry swarm of bees (Or however that works, I'm sure one of the beekeepers here will be happy to explain...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, the eggs were green.
Protip: even if you post as AC, it undoes moderation you've already done.
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.
When there are "counterfeit" seafood, why can't there be "counterfeit" DNA / Certificate?
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. 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.
How about some process telling me that the sea food I eat is free of Oil spill dispersants, Oil contamination and the like?
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?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually, some consumers ARE willing to pay, and that is what my post was about. I pay more than walmart prices, but I get better food. Do not NEED the government to do it. Just educated consumers. And if you choose not to educate yourself, you deserve the food you get. Buyer beware...
I would eat them from your socks
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
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.
and they serve you a sponge monkey!
Please re-read the mod FAQ. There is a reason you're not allowed to mod and post in the same discussion. You just admitted to trying to subvert the mod system, the only thing holding back the wilds of the Internet.....
Also, unless you're browsing through TOR, it's likely your mod was erased anyway.