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Today, my review of Taras Grescoe's recently published book Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood is up at The Tyee.
When Taras Grescoe declares he will try anything on his voyage around the world in search of ethical seafood, he means it. He eats poisonous pufferfish,…
tags: seafood, fisheries, aquaculture, fish farming, tuna, swordfish, salmon, shrimp, sushi, book review
There's plenty of fish in the sea, as the old addage goes -- but are there, really? I experienced a rude awakening at the peak popularity of Orange Roughy, which I loved. I learned that Orange…
This week, the New York TImes ran the Op-Ed How to Handle an Invasive Species? Eat It by Taras Grescoe, who is author of a new book about ethically eating seafood. "One of the great unsung epics of the modern era is the worldwide diaspora of marine invasive species," explains the author. Jellyfish…
Each year, we grind up one-third of all ocean-caught fish to feed industrially raised pigs, chickens, and farmed fish. That's 30 million tonnes of fish turned into fishmeal and oil. What a waste.
So tomorrow at the Science Bloggers conference in North Carolina, Shifting Baselines will launch and…
I had fried sardines in a resturant in Amsterdam. They had a mild sardine flavor and were quite good.
Sardines do taste good, though! I wouldn't recommend the following recipe from 1762 (I normally eat them over rice), but it gives a flavor of how one might eat Clupaeids (in this case herring):
Gelleroy, W. 1762. The London cook, or the whole art of cookery made easy and familiar. Containing a great number of approved and practical receipts in every branch of cookery.. London: S. Crowder, and Co., J. Coote; and J. Fletcher.
When I was 9 and 10, I spent two summers in Tarragona (Spain). I had everyday an oil sardine on a fresh buttered bun, and I remember this as heavenly.
Jennifer: I couldn't comment on your "Consumers Alone Can't..." essay, so I hope you don't mind my doing so here. I agree completely that mislabeling is a huge problem (and efforts towards 'traceability' may offer a partial solution).
Hake or whiting, however, is caught in (mostly midwater) trawls (Merluccius productus and M. gayi) or purse seines (M. gayi), not by longlining. I don't know about the status of M. gayi, but M. productus stocks seem to be pretty healthy.
I'm curious, though, why you think that 'voting with your pocketbook' is ineffective.
Wel, if you consider that the level of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in sardines are the same, if not higher in some North Atlantic (or the baltic, heavens!)areas as that in farmed Atlantic salmon (Norwegian, salmo salar) then dig in!
Surveillance, where it exists for countries supplying the EU, show sardines to have fairly high levels of POPs, and considering they are eaten more frequently than farmed salmon, would constitute the majority of POPs in seafood.
Please show us the the surveillance data, as lower on the food chain is not always safer.