I see there is a bit on Ch 7's current affairs program next Monday about Basa fillets, pacific dory or any of those other names that are used. May be worth a look.
Don't blame me if you don't eat fish and chips again.
I see there is a bit on Ch 7's current affairs program next Monday about Basa fillets, pacific dory or any of those other names that are used. May be worth a look.
Don't blame me if you don't eat fish and chips again.
mate.... if i dont catch it i dont eat it.........
yer i recon ive had the good old "mutton dressed up as lamb" at a few fish n chip shops!!
This crap is much worse.yer i recon ive had the good old "mutton dressed up as lamb" at a few fish n chip shops!!
love the fish and chip shop up here on TI, fresh caught everyday mackerel with homemade beer batter, cannot be beat!! But yeah have had a few ordinary bits from shops down south...
solution - set up your own fish and chip shop!
Was talking to a mate about this at work the other day - for those who don't know, "Basa" is the market name for a variety of catfish from the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, typically raised in cages under houseboats or barges, feeding off the scraps from the houseboat family, or whatever the barge farmers feed them. Banned in several US states from import because of ridiculous amounts of antibiotics in some samples from the farmers pouring wholesale amounts of medication into the cages to keep the fish healthy. Basically if you're a tourist in the region, the local tour operators ban you from swimming in the water - well this guy went for a swim, and reckoned he came out with dried mud and crap on his skin whereever water touched it. One of the filthiest waterways in the world.
And Coles is flogging the stuff to Australian consumers - I reckon a quarter of the fish at the Elsternwick Coles is Basa - either fillets, or marinated pre-prepared skewers for BBQing. I happily tell other shoppers that are checking it out that it's Vietnamese catfish - they switch choices pretty quick
Beauty, another good excuse for me to go fishing
Got to get some fish for the relo's
Mmm me hunter/gatherer
More seriously. it's great that they are showing this to the wider population. If only 30% of people change their mind on buying this crap then the big supermarkets may have to also rethink their situation on buying this crap.
It's sad when they ban the stuff in good ol US of A and in Aussie we (the ever wise Government) welcome it.
Stupid that Aussie has LESS restrictions/inspections/etc on imported food then locally produced food.
Maybe they should serve it up as a Monday thru Friday special on the menu in Parliment house??? Might get something done about it then. But I might as well [smiley=wut.gif]
But it gets worse! Being of the opinion that any fish except mullet, tailor, whiting and flatty is CRAP (yeh I love the stuff) many fish & chip shops will only sell the imported stuff. One shop at the coast only offers Pacific Dory, flake and Barra (of dubious origin).
Fish 53 the best place at East brisbane only stock what they call "boutique fish" and all the fish shops in Cleveland no longer sell the stuff I love. All this stinking Nile Perch, cod (?), flake, Wild Barra and the like. Where do you go for a dirty great chunk of snapper or flattie these days. I am so paranoid I think I will take my cam with me to Coles & Woolies and photograph the undersized crap they call fresh local fish. > > > > >
There, feel so much better now!
WHAT FISH IS THAT?
"Things that batter"
23/11/2005
By Anthony Hoy
Australia's appetite for fish and chips is being fed by Pacific dory, aka Mekong River catfish, which is set to dwarf our local fishing industry.
Anthony Hoy reports:
Fish and chips, a wedge of lemon, lashings of batter and salt - a splash of vinegar to dilute the grease, perhaps - and all washed down with a soft drink, a frosty ale or a glass of vino.
December, the start of the long, hot summer. Bring on the lazy weekends and coastal holidays. Forget slaving over a hot stove or a barbecue: dinner is served, at the beach, in cardboard cartons, or parceled up in newsprint lined with greaseproof paper.
But something is missing, and it's not the seagulls or the flies.
The good, fresh, local catch that Australians have for generations associated with their fish and chips - the flathead, snapper, silver and john dory, red fish, bream and whiting - are in increasingly short supply and, as a result, are becoming prohibitively expensive.
In their place in the fish-and-chips pack, like it or not, is "Pacific dory", the so-called "catch of the day" - an innocuous skinless, boneless and bland-flavored fillet.
Pacific dory is now Australia's biggest-selling fish, according to the Master Fish Merchants Association (MFMA).
With sales approaching a staggering 7000 tonnes this year, it is driving a fish shop revolution. Says MFMA chief executive, Michael Kitchener: "Because it is relatively cheap, retailing at around $10 per kilogram, the public love it."
The problem, according to the chairman of the Australian Fish Names Committee, Roy Palmer, is that Pacific dory has never seen the Pacific - or any other ocean, for that matter.
And it is nothing like a dory.
Here's food for thought: the fish you will probably sink your teeth into the next time you are beachside and hungry has been raised in cages suspended under houseboats and barges in the crowded and polluted waters of Vietnam's Mekong River.
The same snap-frozen and imported fish, says Palmer, is being sold as a popular line in Australian supermarkets under the deceptive marketing label, "freshwater fillet".
It is Pangasius bocourti, one of 21 species of freshwater catfish found in the Mekong basin, and - in a move designed to curb deceptive naming practices by fishmongers and supermarkets - last year christened "basa" under Seafood Services Australia's uniform fish names process.
"Basa's success in the marketplace has been a key factor in fish imports from Vietnam doubling in 2002-03 and then doubling again last year," says managing director of the Sydney Fish Market, Grahame Turk.
An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese are involved in the government-owned basa fishery.
It produces more basa than Australia's total seafood production of 550,000 tonnes a year, according to Turk, who is also deputy chairman of the Australian Seafood Industry Council. Vietnam's basa production, Turk says, is expected to reach 1 million tonnes a year within five years.
Vietnam's catfish exports have already decimated the local catfish industry in the US where producers are fighting back.
There is no basa-farming standard among Vietnamese processors, according to the American domestic fishing lobby, thus there is no distinction in the marketplace between professionally farmed product and caged fish from Mekong houseboats and barges.
Sewage systems along the Mekong struggle to keep pace with rapid development, and run-off from the river's hinterland is polluted by fertilisers and pesticides.
American industry sources claim large stocks of basa are fed through holes cut in the floors of houseboats, the human waste from which also goes straight into the river.
Food for the fish includes vegetable and crop waste, rice bran and animal waste.
The Mekong and associated aquaculture ponds have a high silt concentration, say the Americans, and it is common Vietnamese practice to soak the basa fillets in sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), a chemical used as a preservative and seafood "texturiser".
This means that consumers who purchase basa by weight from Australian supermarkets need to be wary, because fish treated with STPP retain more water.
In August, the American states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana suspended the sale of all Vietnamese aquatic products, following the discovery of the antibiotics ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin in basa imports.
Ciprofoxacin and enrofloxacin - prohibited in western countries because of the risk of their transferring resistant micro-organisms to humans - were being used by some Mekong River basa producers to combat salmonella and other disease in fish.
The antibiotics can also lead to the development of the infectious disease campylobacter, which can cause diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever, nausea and vomiting. Vietnam's Ministry of Fisheries has foreshadowed restrictions on the use of 11 antibiotics in its aquatic products sector.
The use of the name basa in place of Pacific dory is not yet mandatory in Australia, says Roy Palmer, "even though there are a lot of reasons why it should be".
An Australian standard for fish names is expected to be launched early in the new year, as a preliminary step towards legislative controls.
"One of the problems is that every state has different arrangements," Palmer says.
"Until there is uniformity, people can drive holes through these issues.
"And the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service [charged with responsibility for making sure imports meet Australian food standards] does not check fish names. This remains a big problem."
Anthony Hoy
Fish, chips, please, but what is on the plate?
By TONY LOVE
14jan06
BUTTERFISH - South Australia's favourite from fish and chip shops - is largely cheap imported species including a Vietnamese catfish banned in three U.S. states because it contained chemical residues.
Because of confusing naming and labelling laws, consumers will never know what they're eating from fast food shops and many budget food outlets, an investigation by The Advertiser has found.
Butterfish, thought by many South Australians to be locally caught mulloway, flake or even a defined species of the same name, in fact is virtually always an ocean fish called hake, caught and processed on giant floating factory ships in South Africa. Other fish to fill our butterfish orders include hoki from New Zealand, while fishing industry experts warn a new Vietnamese import is becoming more common in hotels and budget and fast food outlets.
"Our expectations as consumers is that butterfish is mulloway," says Angelakis Brothers sales manager Tom Palaktsoglou. "But it's not. Not in fish shops."
In an Advertiser survey of fish and chip shops in suburban Adelaide, all reported they sold hake under the banner of "butterfish", and without exception it was the most popular order.
The Vietnamese import, sold thawed in supermarkets and some fishmongers as cheap white fish fillets under the generic name "basa" is, in fact, a Mekong River catfish.
Basa has come into the marketplace as smaller portioned hake fillets decrease in quantity from overfishing.
Local fishing industry experts warn that consumers should be aware of how these fish are farmed and processed.
It is understood the catfish would definitely be treated by chemicals to cleanse, whiten and improve the flesh texture.
"The environment it's taken from is not by any means what we would accept as a reasonable standard," says SA Fishing Council general manager Neil MacDonald. The basa fish has been banned in three U.S. states because of the presence of antibiotics found in food safety tests.
Samples imported into Australia have been found to contain low-level residues of synthetic dyes, but health authorities have assessed the levels too low to pose a health risk. In response to the findings, the Australian Quarantine Service has begun a random testing program of the relevant imported fish.
Australia imported close to 7000 tonnes of basa last year and 8000 tonnes of hake.
Both are begrudgingly accepted by SA fishing industry leaders because we do not catch and process a fish cheap enough or in the quantity needed to supply the domestic market. "There's nothing that can compete in terms of price or amount of product with a fish like basa, which is produced in thousands of tonnes in low-cost aquaculture," says Mr MacDonald.
The cheap imports are not considered to affect the state's own fishery because whiting, garfish and snapper are considerably more expensive to catch and process, while potentially competitive fish from south-east Australian waters are consumed mostly in the eastern states.
SA industry experts, however, are concerned that consumers here are unaware they are buying imported products, some with questionable quality.
Australia-wide labelling standards for imported fish were gazetted only last month after years of lobbying by consumer groups and fishing industry authorities. Current laws require retailers of raw fish to indicate produce is imported, and new regulations will force them within six months to detail the country of origin of imported fish products.
But food sold cooked in venues such as fish and chip shops, budget food chains and restaurants does not have to be labelled in detail.
"Butterfish is used these days as a generic term for low-priced fish - and low-priced fish of current favour is imported hake," said state Department of Health food section manager Brian Delroy.
The Australian Consumers Association believes consumers are left vulnerable to health and safety issues as well as sales deception because of the labelling issues.
"Let's make sure consumers know what they're buying and also the advantages of buying SA produce," said Seafood Council of SA general manager Martin Smallridge.
THE MEKONG CATFISH
* Basa is the name under which the Mekong River catfish (Pangasius bocourti) is sold.
* Basa is reported being farmed in government aquaculture projects as well as in crowded cages suspended from houseboats, fed through deck holes with animal and vegetable waste products while human waste and chemical residue pollute the river.
I completely agree that it is terrible accepting this kinda low grade crap in this country but I have to ask-what do we really know about ALL the food we are eating(apart from the good fresh stuff pulled from the bay)??.Who knows what goes into a meat pie or a hot dog?who knows what chemicals go into soft drinks ?what about the detergents used to clean fermentation vats by the beer makers?,the list is endless.
We used to be spoiled for freshness and quality in this country until our incompetent leaders embraced the global economy.Now most of our best produce, including fish,is sent overseas for wealthy foreigners to enjoy while we are left with the substandard rubbish they reject and crap imports like the catfish talked about here.
It seems to me that the majority of Aussies have been duped into believing all the political retoric spewed out by the pollies and big business.Apparently we should all be terribly concerned about our trade deficit etc etc which only affects the profits of big business and their bedfellows-politicians.Personally it doesn't seem to make an ounce of difference to me what the state of our economy is good bad or ugly life doesn't change much but we are all convinced daily that it is so important to us all.
I'd rather have the great fresh produce we had when I was a kid than the crappy leftover reject snap frozen 10 mth old preservative filled rubbish that the supermarkets are allowed to force on us. I have been going back to self reliance-growing my own fruit and veg catching my own fish and bartering for fresh beef from my mate and I can tell you it's like I had forgotten what real food tastes like!.
God help us all once these same big corporations get genetically modified everything on the go!!.Jace. psff the soapbox now.
Its disgusting that the import this crap from overseas thats full of god knows what. Same goes for the fruit and veges that they are importing. >
I won't eat fish and chips from the fish shop as I don't think they are going to tell you the truth in what you are actually getting. >
I really don't care if people eat Mekong river turds but they should know they are eating Mekong river turds. Last week I saw Basa fillets on sale as "imported freshwater basa" for $9.30 per Kg and they sold heaps. At end of the week I went to the local fish retailer for some Qld cooked prawns (not fish and chip shop) and the cheapest fish on offer was $26 per kg.
No wonder they sell fish for $9.30 Kg
In the fish and chip shops of the past in Qld the stable was Mackerel and the southern states Flake not now. A couple of weeks ago I was on the Sunshine coast and we were working out what to have or lunch so we decided to have fish and chips. To avoid the Mekong river turds I paid top dollar for Barra and it was under size crap proberbly imported.
Originally Posted by ThePinkPanther
Morgans at Scarborough. I would say they have the best seafood in Brisbane, apart from catching it yourself.
Cheers,
Jake