I wanted to add some more thoughts to the editorial comment Friday on a Tough Week for the Seafood Industry.
I am currently reading Michael Polin's book, the Omnivore's Dilemma, in which he talks about corn. Basically, Americans now get virtually all their body mass from corn and petroleum. The reason is that corn is the principal cattle feed; it is the second highest ingredient in coca cola, it is the oil often used for frying; it is added to most processed foods in one form or another. The petroleum part comes in because it takes about half a gallon of gasoline to produce a bushel of corn, due to fertilizer etc.
Cattle are not even able to eat corn in a natural environment. It bloats their digestive system, and they suffocate. It is only thru continuous use of medicine and antibiotics that cattle can survive 6 to 12 months on a feed lot.
I think growing consumer knowledge of the fraud that is corn-fed beef is one of the reasons meat consumption is stagnant or falling. More and more people consider the way meat is produced to be unhealthy, and they stay away from it.
IN the seafood industry, we have seen the rapid proliferation of industrial processing in the last twenty years. Prior to that, very little industrial scale processing was done for seafood.
By industrial processing, I mean treating the product in some way so as to change or enhance its natural characteristics in a way that is profitable. Examples are soaking shrimp or scallops with STP beyond the minimal amounts that provide freezing benefits. Or treating tilapia with CO (carbon monoxide) so a fillet that is seven or eight days old looks the same as one that is 24 hours old. CO is also widely used in treating tuna. However it is banned in Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Another example is water or brine injection. Most retail salmon fillets are injected with a solution. Costco uses a 4% spec, I believe. Other fish fillet sellers also use injection. The result is to provide a 5% to 10% increase in the net weight of the fillet which is nothing more than water.
All of these processes lower the per lb. cost of the actual product. But now we are running up against the limits of adulteration; so outright net weight cheating has become rampant. No longer are we content to sell pumped up shrimp, now we sell 4.4 lbs. of shrimp in a 5 lb. box, as we do for squid, catfish, many other products.
Where does this end. The three primary attributes of seafood in the consumers mind are fresh, natural, and healthy. Our industrial processes are undermining all of these attributes.
In the U.S., we can have some faith in the level of process control so that abuses that threaten health and quality will not be tolerated. We have less faith that is true on the edges of competition in China.
There is a food revolution going on-- as evidenced by the growth of natural, organic, and "certified" products. It is shown in the steady decline of market share of traditional supermarkets, and the loss for many packaged goods.
Seafood could benefit tremendously from our products natural attributes: wild, healthy, minimally processed. But we are in danger of squandering our birthright.
In this fight, local fishing communities are key allies that will help us position seafood as a positive food choice. Rampant industrialization that destroyes local communities, and adulterates our products, may provide a short term financial fix, but at the long term cost of destroying the value of our industry.
John, I just discovered your blog on the website. I particularly appreciated this entry with its new content to me as an American consumer and regular customer at Trader Joe's and Costco. Is the % of water content listed on the label? Next time, I'll look. Thanks, Margaret
Posted by: Margaret Hall | June 27, 2007 at 06:19 PM