One of my all time favorite days in history was when Seabright showed up to a cookout that Woodsie was having with about a 4-pound section of a bluefin tuna he had caught that morning. Real North Atlantic bluefin, never frozen, the kind of thing you just accept you will never taste.
I was assigned the duty of preparing it for the crowd. Chopes, Wife and I ate it raw, while everyone else watched and waited for me to figure out how to cook it. Ultimately, I went the easy way: I sliced it into four steaks, threw it on the grill long enough to barely color it (so people could convince themselves it had been cooked) and splashed a little Kikoman soy on it.
It was amazing, fantastic; it was buttery and wonderful. Experiences like this keep me sidelined on fish issues. Yes, bluefin is being ridiculously over-fished, their average weight is down by something like 50%, and there are 90% less than there were in the '70s. I must also consider that long line fishing reeks havoc on all kinds of other sea life, and it is also easy to follow the reasoning that if bigger carnivorous fish contain the most mercury this is the fish most likely to make you stupid. I accept it is likely that, because of over-fishing, there will probably be no bluefin left pretty soon. As a result of knowing all this, I don't go out of my way looking for bluefin tuna.
The truth is, most of the fish I see on a day-to-day basis is a gassed, sub-par form of bluefin that should never have been killed anyway, so I find it as easy to walk on by as I do a Florida Tomato. I mean crap is crap. However, real, great bluefin tuna is magic, and I eat it when I get the chance. I reassure my self that by not eating the crap served in cheap sushi joints, or "grilled rare and put on top of our house ceaser salad," I am not supporting the market, and hopefully people will stop taking young tuna from the sea.
Over-fishing is a real concern for me; I hate the idea that, in order to catch fish we want, we kill an enormous amount of fish by happenstance, bycatch, and as a result I try to base my fish choices on some eco-friendly guidelines.
There is also the consideration that I disagree with some fish farming practices, Salmon, for example (if you need to dye it, it can't be good), and agree with others, mussels (they clean the water, and seldom compete with natural species).
Then there is the fact that the mercury residue of our industrial revolution has made most fish poisonous, to some degree or other.
Eating seafood is a conundrum I haven't fully wrapped my head around at this time. The way things are going the quality of fish is less good, less plentiful, and significantly less healthy, but Masa's toro is sublime. So whenever I see public discussion on these topics, I try to follow it. At the moment, the Chicago Tribune has brought mercury concerns of canned tuna to the forefront. Here is some of what I am reading:
"When the Food and Drug Administration updated its mercury warning last year, it arbitrarily classified canned light tuna as low in mercury to "keep market share at a reasonable level," one agency official told an FDA advisory panel, according to transcripts of the meeting."
"But theNational Academy of Sciences, the nation's leading scientific body, concluded in 2000 that a larger body of evidence shows mercury does cause harm and that exposure limits should be based on that research.
Tuna industry officials remain unconvinced, stressing that their product is one of the healthiest foods children and pregnant women can eat."
"The drafts were tested on consumer focus groups, and during one session the parent of a 15-month-old child asked about the risks of canned tuna. Alan Levy, chief of the FDA's consumer studies branch, answered: "It would be, you know, prudent to cut back if he's eating more than a can-and-a-half a week," according to transcripts of the meeting.
Addressing another focus group, Levy acknowledged that the agency's mercury limit in fish--since relaxed from 0.5 to 1 part per million--was not low enough to protect fetuses" Chicago Tribune Dec 13 '05
"That decision had implications far beyond tuna. Once the FDA defined canned light tuna as low, all other kinds of seafood with comparable levels of mercury, such as cod, also had to be listed as low.
When asked in an interview why officials arbitrarily chose the low mercury level instead of employing scientific calculations, Acheson said: "It was a perfectly appropriate scientific decision to choose that value compared to any other value. You could certainly move it up, you could move it down, and you might get a different result."
Industry officials are fighting the suit, and they have an unlikely ally: the FDA. The agency said the federal warning issued last year--the same one that misleads consumers about the levels of mercury in fish--is the best way to advise the public Chicago Tribune Dec 13 '05
The fact that one tuna species--yellowfin--may contain slightly higher amounts of mercury than some other species is a meaningless fact, especially since the fish intended for tuna steaks is not used in canned tuna and the yellowfin used in our products was confirmed by the Chicago Tribune's own tests to contain very low levels of mercury Chicago Tribune Dec 22 '05
In recent years the tuna industry, fearing class-action lawsuits and a drop in sales, has opposed government efforts to warn consumers about mercury in tuna, federal records show. The industry is especially concerned about warnings regarding canned light tuna, which accounts for 65 percent of all cans of tuna sold. Albacore makes up 35 percent.
Since the Tribune series was published, the Tuna Foundation has defended the use of yellowfin in light tuna.
In an interview, Burney, the foundation director, said gourmet canned tuna is not light tuna but rather "a completely different product."
But gourmet cans prominently say "light tuna" on the labels Chicago Tribune Dec 31 '05
The Tribune series reported that about 180 million cans of light tuna are made with yellowfin each year. Half of those cans are marketed as a gourmet product. StarKist calls its product "Gourmet's Choice," Chicken of the Sea markets a "Tonno" product under the Genova label and Bumble Bee offers a "Tonno in olive oil" variety. Of those, only Genova identifies its product as yellowfin Chicago Tribune Dec 31 '05
Make of these what you will, I just hate feeling like the only guy that knows this is going on.
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