Boston Globe Article on Fish Substitution @ restaurants

[ecduzitgood]

Originally Posted by JackK

First paragraph is pretty stupid though- customer orders white tuna and gets escolar, orders Alaskan butterfish and gets sablefish.

That's like ordering Chilean sea bass and getting upset that you receive Patagonian toothfish. Dumb reporting in the context of the article.

I take it your not the type of person that wants to get that which they paid for. Is there any fishing gear your looking to buy? I have some old appliances I want to get rid of

[JackK]

Originally Posted by ecduzitgood

I take it your not the type of person that wants to get that which they paid for. Is there any fishing gear your looking to buy? I have some old appliances I want to get rid of

My point was that white tuna is the marketed brand name for escolar, Alaskan butterfish is the brand name for sablefish, and Chilean sea bass is the marketed name of Patagonian toothfish. There is no "real" species of white tuna, Alaskan butterfish, or Chilean sea bass.

Why? Because vendors change the name to make it sound more appealing to the American consumer. No one would eat something on the menu called Patagonian toothfish. Heck, they even reference ocean perch in that article- that's the marketed name for the acadian redfish (In the Atlantic. Could be the Pacific Ocean Perch, but the article isn't clear).

It's an apples to oranges comparison- It's not substituting one species for another, like the authors are referencing with catfish as flounder, Pacific cod as Atlantic, YFT as SBFT, etc. The restaurant/store is being accurate in what they call that species- according to the market.

Now, serving someone escolar and calling it albacore is a different story. Anyone who's actually eaten albacore knows it's completely different than ecolar (pink flesh, NOT white, texture, etc) but the vast majority of the public just associates the color with the canned fish- so yes, that's mislabeling. But an escolar is as closely related to a tuna as a toothfish is to a sea bass- yet you don't hear her harping on that one. Maybe in part two.

Not saying that I disagree with the context of the article- yes, species swapping and mislabeling is a serious concern. All the more reason to buy from your smaller local fish markets, and eat at restaurants that accurately trace the source of their fish. I was just pointing out that the comparisons the author made at the beginning of the article were irrelevant to her main point.

And yeah, my vacuum just broke, so I'll take an old reel off your hands if you have one to spare