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What's the What with Fish Fraud? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: it professional, make it beautiful. Welcome to you Stuff you
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Speaker 1: should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
0:36
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
0:40
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. Jerry's to my right, different things rolling, feeling easy.
0:46
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know. Is that really Jerry?
0:51
Speaker 1: Is it just Jerry the tooth pitch? Perhaps we've been
0:57
Speaker 1: fooled this entire time. Yeah, I mean we'd have to
1:00
Speaker 1: do a DNA test. Yeah, Jerry, I just made air quotes. Everybody.
1:05
Speaker 1: Can we swab your mouth? I don't think we need to.
1:08
Speaker 1: Her spittle is all over this room. She spits on
1:13
Speaker 1: our microphones when we leave every day. I'm sure she does.
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I've never been more convinced of anything. Some
1:19
Speaker 1: days more than others. Uh, well that was just a
1:24
Speaker 1: little um play acting what I was all in. Jerry's
1:30
Speaker 1: a real human, She's not a toothfish. Oh yeah, but
1:33
Speaker 1: you know it is a toothfish. Yeah, Chilean sea baths.
1:36
Speaker 1: That's right, dude, We've just said that before. I feel
1:41
Speaker 1: like it was in our in the TV show, so
1:44
Speaker 1: like eight people at least heard it there. Let's see
1:48
Speaker 1: my wife your wife. Uh yeah, we for sure mentioned
1:53
Speaker 1: it on the TV show, and I feel like we've
1:55
Speaker 1: mentioned it before. Everyone knows by now, right, because that's
1:58
Speaker 1: one of those facts that people love to drop at
2:01
Speaker 1: a dinner party, like, you know, what you're eating filth. Yeah,
2:05
Speaker 1: it's delicious. Toothfish is what it is, right, you know. Yeah.
2:08
Speaker 1: But I mean if you like, if a fish is
2:10
Speaker 1: called a Patagonian toothfish, but it tastes delicious, then yeah,
2:17
Speaker 1: there's really nothing wrong with just changing the name. Correct.
2:20
Speaker 1: The problem comes when people get ripped off for paying
2:25
Speaker 1: more money for something they think it is and it's not.
2:29
Speaker 1: That is actually a surprisingly enormous problem. It turns out
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Speaker 1: it's called fish fraud or seafood fraud, and there's some
2:37
Speaker 1: sheriff's on the case they're called Oceana. Yeah, they did it.
2:42
Speaker 1: They're a great organization, by the way, they're fantastic. They
2:46
Speaker 1: did this big study led by a woman named Kimberly
2:50
Speaker 1: Warner in two thousand twelve because they knew everyone knew.
2:55
Speaker 1: This was no surprise that fish are purposefully mislabeled a
2:59
Speaker 1: lot of time by well, it kind of depends. I mean,
3:04
Speaker 1: it could be the fisher person, could be the the
3:08
Speaker 1: company they worked for. It could be the people that
3:11
Speaker 1: they sell to at the docks. The wholesalers could be distributors,
3:15
Speaker 1: could be the restaurant tour or the grocer you're buying
3:18
Speaker 1: from who goes in the back and like stifles a
3:22
Speaker 1: chuckle because you just paid seven times what that fish
3:26
Speaker 1: is actually worth. I'm sure because you thought it was
3:28
Speaker 1: something else. It does happen, and so, like you said,
3:31
Speaker 1: everybody knows that this happened. But the Oceanic study was
3:35
Speaker 1: it revealed just how widespread it was. Yeah, they reported
3:39
Speaker 1: that thirty three of the fish it tested in restaurants
3:45
Speaker 1: and markets were not the fish that the fish said
3:48
Speaker 1: they were. It gets worse. That's everything they tested that
3:52
Speaker 1: was the average, right, So fully a third of all
3:55
Speaker 1: the samples, and they took like forty seven samples six
3:59
Speaker 1: hundred and many five restaurants in twenty one states across
4:02
Speaker 1: the US. They found that in sushi restaurants in particular,
4:10
Speaker 1: of the food samples were mislabeled. And if so, you say, well,
4:14
Speaker 1: seventy of sushi restaurants do that, no of samples of
4:20
Speaker 1: the sushi restaurants sold mislabeled fish. Yeah, like this isn't mackerel,
4:25
Speaker 1: it's ground beef. And a hundred percent d percent of
4:30
Speaker 1: the hammachi, the yellowtail was mislabeled. None of it was
4:34
Speaker 1: actual yellowtail. Yeah. And and just at the sushi restaurants
4:41
Speaker 1: of Hamachi. Yeah, there's a new place in Atlanta that
4:44
Speaker 1: I went to recently called Brush that I already mentioned this.
4:49
Speaker 1: It's the best sushi I've ever had, probably really and
4:53
Speaker 1: it's the most expensive shi I've ever had. It's called Brush. Yeah,
4:57
Speaker 1: where is it? It's Indicator and it's Um. I mean
5:01
Speaker 1: it's really pricey. Have you been to Umi? No, stuff,
5:04
Speaker 1: haven't been there, but like i'd be interested in compared
5:07
Speaker 1: to a single piece piece of sushi, is like twelve
5:09
Speaker 1: bucks shushi for twelve sushi sandwich, you know, yeah, that's
5:14
Speaker 1: pretty expensive sushi. Yeah, I mean we dropped for a
5:17
Speaker 1: regular meal, way too much money. But do you do
5:21
Speaker 1: when you walked out of there? This is the key.
5:24
Speaker 1: When you walked out of there, did you feel like
5:26
Speaker 1: you've gotten your money's worth? Or were you slightly irritated? No?
5:30
Speaker 1: It was It was the most delicious sushi I've ever had. Cool.
5:34
Speaker 1: But here's the deal. They just give you. I thought
5:36
Speaker 1: we talked about this. Maybe not. Um, you're confusing me
5:38
Speaker 1: with you know how their podcast. I love to over
5:42
Speaker 1: soy my sushi. That's how I like it. But they
5:46
Speaker 1: don't let you do that. They don't give you soy
5:48
Speaker 1: sauce at all. And then if you ask for it,
5:51
Speaker 1: that good. You know my views on untaste, Yeah, do
5:56
Speaker 1: it the way I say it. But if you request it,
5:59
Speaker 1: they of you a little spray bottle. Yeah, well they're
6:03
Speaker 1: serious about this tiny little spray bottle that you can
6:05
Speaker 1: spray on your things. So did you like get a
6:07
Speaker 1: cramp spraying soy sauce on your sushi? Now? I unscrewed it,
6:10
Speaker 1: and that's awesome. If I'm gonna pay two meal, sure
6:15
Speaker 1: you should be able to eat it. How you want
6:16
Speaker 1: to agree exactly. That's like, I don't know, come to
6:19
Speaker 1: a hot dog place, You're like, you really don't think
6:21
Speaker 1: you should put catchup on there, So we're not going
6:23
Speaker 1: to have that for you, you know, or they give
6:26
Speaker 1: you a spray bottle cap, it won't work, that's right. Okay,
6:32
Speaker 1: Well there's some good free buzz marketing for brush. Frankly,
6:34
Speaker 1: I think you owe us both the gift card. Yeah,
6:37
Speaker 1: but my point was you would think, I mean, there
6:40
Speaker 1: was sabby was real. You would think that they that
6:43
Speaker 1: everything was as advertised when you go to a place
6:45
Speaker 1: at night. The problem is man like they they may
6:49
Speaker 1: believe that, and the people that they bought it from
6:51
Speaker 1: me believe it. But I was reading the Sociana study
6:54
Speaker 1: and they said that I think even more than of
6:59
Speaker 1: the seafood imported in the US, and that's most of
7:02
Speaker 1: the seafoo in the US we impored, almost all of
7:04
Speaker 1: it is processed at sea. And I was like, what
7:08
Speaker 1: does that mean? And I went and searched like fish
7:11
Speaker 1: processing at sea and I found this little twelve minute
7:14
Speaker 1: like Yankee documentary about I think like Norwegian or some
7:19
Speaker 1: sort of Scandinavian fisher trawler where they start with the
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Speaker 1: catch had this huge net of I'm not quite sure
7:29
Speaker 1: what kind of fish it was, but it was generally
7:31
Speaker 1: the same fish that they Um, what you didn't know
7:35
Speaker 1: what kind of fishing right right, Well, yeah, I'm getting
7:37
Speaker 1: to that. Then they dump them into like the fish
7:39
Speaker 1: sorting things, right, and then um they start processing. They
7:43
Speaker 1: have a whole processing plant in the on the boat
7:47
Speaker 1: and so by the time these guys get to shore,
7:50
Speaker 1: these things are already frozen salid in blocks, packaged in boxes.
7:55
Speaker 1: So the people who are buying it have to be like, okay,
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Speaker 1: it says on the box this, I'm gonna trust you
8:01
Speaker 1: and give me, you know, half a million or a
8:04
Speaker 1: million pounds of that stuff because I'm a distributor. And
8:07
Speaker 1: if they're not truthful, the fisher people aren't truth truthful,
8:11
Speaker 1: then the whole supply line is infected and it's very
8:14
Speaker 1: tough to verify it is. Oceania has a map, by
8:18
Speaker 1: the way, if you go to their website and just
8:20
Speaker 1: google fish fraud, Oceania will go right there and they
8:23
Speaker 1: have a handy map where you can click on It's
8:26
Speaker 1: all over the world. It's not a US problem, um,
8:29
Speaker 1: and you can click on like Atlanta, Georgia. If that's
8:31
Speaker 1: where you live. And UM, what it will do is
8:34
Speaker 1: linked to UH. If they don't have a study from
8:38
Speaker 1: the restaurants, they will link to other source studies that
8:40
Speaker 1: they've compiled. And there was one that was a link
8:43
Speaker 1: to UH. A j c our newspaper or had an
8:46
Speaker 1: article about local restaurants. You know, when they do that,
8:49
Speaker 1: the expose a thing. We visited eight local restaurants and
8:53
Speaker 1: they called them out by name. And of course these
8:55
Speaker 1: people are like, well, I didn't know, right, So and
8:58
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times they probably don't know.
9:00
Speaker 1: I would guess probably most of the time they don't know. Yeah,
9:03
Speaker 1: you know. I mean if you're if you're dealing directly
9:06
Speaker 1: with the end consumer, you're you're probably going to be
9:09
Speaker 1: less likely to engage in fraud, you know. Um. And
9:14
Speaker 1: if this sounds like a not big deal, it's a
9:17
Speaker 1: billion dollar fraud and dollars annually in fraud in America alone, Yeah,
9:24
Speaker 1: just the United States, that's right. So yeah. And the
9:27
Speaker 1: reason why it's billion dollars worth of frauds because we
9:30
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money on seafood. Um it's good
9:34
Speaker 1: for you, right, And the number one driver of UM
9:37
Speaker 1: seafood fraud is misrepresenting something like as an expensive fish
9:44
Speaker 1: in replacing it with the fish that's much less expensive.
9:47
Speaker 1: That's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. The
9:50
Speaker 1: FDA does have laws, UM, but the problem is one
9:55
Speaker 1: of the problem UH problems is less than one percent
9:58
Speaker 1: of all the fish that are in ordered, less than
10:01
Speaker 1: one percent is inspected. So one percent of all the
10:06
Speaker 1: fish and seafood eaten in the United States is inspective
10:11
Speaker 1: for fraud. Yeah, and the and the ten percent. I mean,
10:14
Speaker 1: one of the tips that will give you later I'll
10:16
Speaker 1: go ahead and say now is if you buy local
10:19
Speaker 1: fish or fish from the United States, you're far less
10:23
Speaker 1: likely to be UH frauded defrauded. Yeah, defrauded, which doesn't
10:29
Speaker 1: make any sense. It's like inflammable. Yeah. But um, apparently
10:32
Speaker 1: the US internally does a pretty good job keeping it
10:36
Speaker 1: above board, but like you said, comes from elsewhere. So
10:39
Speaker 1: that's the issue and one of the reasons why it's
10:41
Speaker 1: um that the f D a UM or the United
10:45
Speaker 1: States I should say, the federal government has so much
10:48
Speaker 1: trouble inspecting imported fish because there's apparently like ninety agents
10:54
Speaker 1: tasked with inspecting all of the fish that's imported into
10:58
Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, inty people. Yeah, and that's the
11:02
Speaker 1: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in o a A. Noah
11:06
Speaker 1: is who's doing this. Um, And they're doing the best
11:10
Speaker 1: they can. But ninety people. It's like I didn't get
11:14
Speaker 1: numbers on how much of our imported fishes, but I
11:18
Speaker 1: mean it's got to be like foounds maybe maybe even
11:22
Speaker 1: up to a thousand, so there's no way they can
11:24
Speaker 1: test all these fish. Um. What's funny in the Sociana
11:28
Speaker 1: UM study, and I should say this is from two twelve.
11:32
Speaker 1: I think this made the news several years ago and
11:35
Speaker 1: we're bringing it back. Um, they're they're the worst offenders
11:40
Speaker 1: as far as seafood frog go. We're Thailand and Vietnam.
11:43
Speaker 1: But Canada was mentioned in there. What Yeah, oh Canada.
11:49
Speaker 1: I know that's what I say to Yeah, they apparently
11:52
Speaker 1: don't have nearly as stringent aquaculture laws as we do
11:56
Speaker 1: in the US. I know that's what I said too.
12:00
Speaker 1: There are such nice people, though I would have thought
12:01
Speaker 1: would be the opposite, you know, Yeah, maybe that's what
12:04
Speaker 1: it is. Maybe they're like, we don't need laws. Of course,
12:06
Speaker 1: we're not going to defraud. You were Canadians and maybe
12:09
Speaker 1: it's just a mistake. They're like looks like a god
12:12
Speaker 1: to me, a you know, like they're not intentionally defrauding people,
12:16
Speaker 1: because Canadians don't do that. Uh. All right, well let's
12:21
Speaker 1: take a break and we're gonna talk about, um kind
12:23
Speaker 1: of how this is done right after this. All right,
12:50
Speaker 1: So I promised to tell you how this is done. Um.
12:52
Speaker 1: One of the big ways and reasons this can happen
12:57
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the time him these fake fish,
13:02
Speaker 1: they're real fish, fraudulent fish, unless it's that fake crab stuff, right,
13:07
Speaker 1: which is still fish. Oh yeah it is, isn't it.
13:09
Speaker 1: It's like white fish in it. Um, it's like string
13:13
Speaker 1: cheese crab. It's still delicious. I love it. Do you
13:15
Speaker 1: like it? I'm not big on it, yeah, I mean,
13:17
Speaker 1: of course I always prefer the real thing. I had
13:19
Speaker 1: too much when I was a kid. I think. Yeah,
13:21
Speaker 1: I do a pretty good uh kind of red nicky
13:24
Speaker 1: crab dip with it. Oh yeah, it's just delicious, just
13:27
Speaker 1: like mayonnaise and what's the shirt and stuff? It is good. Uh.
13:31
Speaker 1: I will say this is like as red nicky as
13:34
Speaker 1: it is when I have it at places like parties,
13:37
Speaker 1: People like it's like crack. Even high society types, Yep,
13:41
Speaker 1: they can't get enough of it. They're like, what's in this?
13:43
Speaker 1: And I go Duke's mayonnaise and fake crab what? Alright?
13:50
Speaker 1: So what was pop out they do? Oh? Yeah. The
13:53
Speaker 1: reason why this happens is a lot of these fraudulent
13:55
Speaker 1: fish are they come to you as filet's. They don't
13:58
Speaker 1: have the head in the tail and the skin and
14:00
Speaker 1: all those things, and you can't or maybe the skin,
14:03
Speaker 1: but people don't know this. Really. This goes to that
14:06
Speaker 1: um processing, right, So, like these guys just dumped a
14:10
Speaker 1: net full of fish down these shoots, and the first
14:13
Speaker 1: thing they did was the things went um perpendicular down
14:19
Speaker 1: a conveyor belt, right, So rather than facing the direction
14:22
Speaker 1: that the conveyor conveyor belt was going, they were perpendicular
14:25
Speaker 1: in that direction. And it just so happened that along
14:28
Speaker 1: that conveyor belt was a big circular saw that was
14:31
Speaker 1: exactly where their head was placed. So it just cuts
14:33
Speaker 1: their heads right off, right, You can identify that fish
14:36
Speaker 1: very easily. Then it goes into the body splitter and gutter,
14:40
Speaker 1: then the fil ayer and seriously, I was watching this,
14:44
Speaker 1: I'm like, that is that the same kind of fish,
14:47
Speaker 1: and yet they were ending up in the same like
14:50
Speaker 1: batch of fish that was being sold in package together.
14:53
Speaker 1: So I was looking around to see, like, who's keeping
14:57
Speaker 1: up with this? And again at sea, nobody's keeping up
15:01
Speaker 1: with it. Of course not right. So like in the
15:04
Speaker 1: United States and in other countries, there are people who, um,
15:08
Speaker 1: who are overseeing this stuff, and sorting fish is a
15:13
Speaker 1: it's a big deal, but it's also a pain, right,
15:15
Speaker 1: because if you get what's called bycatch in your in
15:18
Speaker 1: your in your catch, yeah, in your nets, like you
15:22
Speaker 1: don't if you're if you're shopping for tuna, you don't
15:24
Speaker 1: want dolphin, you know, if you're fishing for tuna and
15:27
Speaker 1: you and you hauling a big net, like you're gonna
15:30
Speaker 1: have all kinds of stuff in there. Yeah. And apparently
15:33
Speaker 1: we read this little Mother Jones article two. Did you
15:35
Speaker 1: read that? So? Um, Apparently this is a fairly recent
15:41
Speaker 1: phenomenon by catch, right, because in like the sixties or seventies,
15:45
Speaker 1: they started using much longer line, so they were catching
15:49
Speaker 1: much deeper fish, and they were also by catching fish
15:52
Speaker 1: that they didn't normally catch before, including the Patagonian toothfish.
15:57
Speaker 1: So these guys are bringing up so much bycatch, and
16:00
Speaker 1: it's such a pain to just sort this stuff and
16:03
Speaker 1: then basically throw it away. They're like, we should rename
16:07
Speaker 1: this thing and like create a market for it. So
16:09
Speaker 1: they did. So they renamed Patagonian toothfish Chilean sea bass,
16:14
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, there's a big market for it.
16:17
Speaker 1: The irony is now they're over fishing Chilean sea baths
16:21
Speaker 1: Patagonian toothfish. They need to change the name back again.
16:29
Speaker 1: Uh all right, well, here's here's a list, and we're
16:31
Speaker 1: gonna get to that other. I know, if you tease
16:35
Speaker 1: someone with something like exlex fish, it's always good to
16:39
Speaker 1: come back to that. But we will list out a
16:42
Speaker 1: few of the things that are most often substituted. Um
16:46
Speaker 1: Pacific cod or Alaskan cod. Um. A lot of times
16:50
Speaker 1: you're gonna be getting Asian catfish, or maybe a thread
16:53
Speaker 1: fan slickhead, or maybe even silapia thread finn slickheads or
16:57
Speaker 1: a diamond dozen. Uh, Pacific alibu, you might get Atlantic alibu,
17:02
Speaker 1: Atlantic cod, you might get Pacific cod. Yeah. Groupers a
17:07
Speaker 1: big one. Yeah. Groupers apparently the most swapped out fish,
17:12
Speaker 1: the most fraudulent fish of all I think because the
17:14
Speaker 1: markup is so great. The markup is great, but also
17:18
Speaker 1: because the FDA is doing some weird stuff. So the
17:22
Speaker 1: FDA determines what's food in America, and there's like species
17:27
Speaker 1: of fish that qualify as food that marketable food. Right, grouper.
17:32
Speaker 1: There's something like sixties six species and twelve different geni
17:38
Speaker 1: um of fish that can be sold as just grouper
17:42
Speaker 1: in America. So not only is it expensive, but it's
17:46
Speaker 1: also um. There's a lot of confusion, so most most
17:49
Speaker 1: restaurateurs won't be like, well, that's that's not grouper, that's
17:53
Speaker 1: um um Asian catfish. Yeah. They'd be like, well that's
17:57
Speaker 1: the type of grouper, Okay, but it's not in that case. Yeah,
18:01
Speaker 1: but yeah, you're right, it's it's it's there are that
18:04
Speaker 1: many kinds of one fish. It's probably hard to regulate,
18:06
Speaker 1: harder to regulate, and I think the market they said
18:08
Speaker 1: it's like four times if you are if you're selling
18:13
Speaker 1: Asian catfish, it's gonna be a four times markup for grouper. Right,
18:17
Speaker 1: So if you're impoverished fisher person, you'll say, yeah, maybe
18:25
Speaker 1: this ship man grouper, red snapper, Right, you want to
18:29
Speaker 1: see if you see like a box with grouper and
18:32
Speaker 1: a question markt be wary of that one red snapper.
18:36
Speaker 1: Be aware you might be eating crimson snapper instead. That's
18:40
Speaker 1: a big, big problem. Or tilapia. Yeah, and then salmon,
18:45
Speaker 1: of course there there's a wide range of salmon and
18:49
Speaker 1: a wide range of prices according to what kind of
18:52
Speaker 1: salmon it is. And it's all farmed Atlantic salmon, well
18:56
Speaker 1: it could be for apparently that's ah, that's what they
18:59
Speaker 1: switch all of them out with. Like, if you think
19:01
Speaker 1: you're getting a Copper River salmon, it's probably Copper River
19:06
Speaker 1: salmon because that's here in the US. Sure, But if
19:09
Speaker 1: you think, oh, look at that that ski over there,
19:13
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, don't don't see his face, but it's probably
19:19
Speaker 1: Atlantic salmon. Yeah. And at first I was like, I
19:22
Speaker 1: don't understand how they could swap out salmon because it's
19:26
Speaker 1: so just distinctive. But now I get it, because you
19:29
Speaker 1: think it's like a wild caught Alaskan salmon, and it's
19:32
Speaker 1: it was, you know, farmed in some guy's backyard in Louisiana,
19:35
Speaker 1: you know. And I was looking to see what the
19:38
Speaker 1: difference is between wild caught and farmed fish Apparently for
19:44
Speaker 1: every pro on one side, there's a con as well,
19:48
Speaker 1: And if you kind of go down the list, they
19:50
Speaker 1: pretty much even out one another. Um. A lot of
19:54
Speaker 1: the old unsustainable practices like get this, so to feed fish,
19:59
Speaker 1: they will go out and catch smaller fish and then
20:03
Speaker 1: feed the smaller fish to the bigger fish, which is
20:07
Speaker 1: stupid because you're going and getting all of the babies
20:10
Speaker 1: from fish nurseries that and they won't grow up any longer.
20:15
Speaker 1: They figured out that you can feed them a combination
20:18
Speaker 1: of worms and algae and that has basically the same
20:21
Speaker 1: amount of nutrients, but it's what more too expensive or
20:24
Speaker 1: not as easy or something, I don't know, I don't know.
20:28
Speaker 1: But similarly, right um, they're like, well, you know, there's
20:31
Speaker 1: a lot of runoff and farms and stuff that that
20:34
Speaker 1: can pollute the fishery. Um, but the same thing can
20:37
Speaker 1: be true for like actual like wild coots fish as well.
20:42
Speaker 1: So there's like this weird give and take, and they
20:44
Speaker 1: seem to totally equal out. Yeah, So as far as
20:47
Speaker 1: the most mislabeled in the oceanic study, at least of
20:53
Speaker 1: snapper samples that they found were mislabeled, and that was
20:57
Speaker 1: the number one mislabeled fish. In their study that year,
21:00
Speaker 1: tuna was number two. It's fifty nine. That's that's like
21:05
Speaker 1: close to the tuna almost there. Yeah, and white tuna
21:08
Speaker 1: is is a big reason why. Um, we've all probably
21:12
Speaker 1: had albacore delicious albacore. Um. And white tuna is not
21:17
Speaker 1: even a fish. So if you go to anywhere but
21:21
Speaker 1: a sushi place, it says white tuna. UM, say like,
21:25
Speaker 1: well that's not a fish. What is this would be like,
21:28
Speaker 1: it's white tuna. Stop asking questions. Yeah, they'll take your
21:31
Speaker 1: soy sauce away, give you mustard instead of a sabi
21:35
Speaker 1: in a bottle. Um. But yeah, it's not even a
21:38
Speaker 1: real fish. So um uh esclar is the fish that
21:43
Speaker 1: we've been teasing this whole time, the ex lax fish. Yes,
21:46
Speaker 1: and I love this fish. I do too. I didn't
21:49
Speaker 1: realize it was that I've eaten it his butterfish many
21:53
Speaker 1: a time. Yeah. What are the other names for it? Butterfish, um,
21:58
Speaker 1: white tuna, Hawaiian wallo. Yeah, that's it. That's very misleading.
22:03
Speaker 1: Rudder fish. Rudder fish sounds inedible itself. You know, sure,
22:07
Speaker 1: I wouldn't need a rudder fish. I'd be like get
22:09
Speaker 1: this off the menu. I think Escolar sounds like very fancy. Yeah,
22:14
Speaker 1: like it makes your pinky go up when you say it,
22:16
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like Escalar, Yeah, because it sounds like Escobar.
22:20
Speaker 1: And he was the best drug king pin of all time. Sure, yeah,
22:23
Speaker 1: he was the fancy drug king But I guess Escalar.
22:26
Speaker 1: People know it's a dirty little secret, which is that
22:30
Speaker 1: there is an oil, uh this wax esther that makes
22:35
Speaker 1: it taste delicious and it's not digestible by us. So
22:40
Speaker 1: if you eat more like in little tiny sushi portions,
22:43
Speaker 1: it's it's okay, but if you get enough of it,
22:45
Speaker 1: you're gonna have the poopy pants by enough of it,
22:49
Speaker 1: like a filet can do it supply? Probably? Yeah, Like
22:53
Speaker 1: anal seepage apparently is the result of eating this stuff. Yeah,
23:00
Speaker 1: say I didn't he didn't know. I did. People need
23:04
Speaker 1: to be informed. Uh Yeah. So what happened was, um
23:08
Speaker 1: people started blue fin tuna, as everyone knows, is very
23:12
Speaker 1: expensive now because there's not as much of it. So
23:16
Speaker 1: vy blue fin tuna was about fourteen cents a pound
23:19
Speaker 1: on the wholesale market, and UM it varies now. In
23:23
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen it was eight to twelve bucks
23:26
Speaker 1: a pound, and in two thousand and fourteen it was
23:29
Speaker 1: actually higher, it was ten to fifteen dollars a pound.
23:32
Speaker 1: That's why you see these crazy reports like a fisherman
23:36
Speaker 1: catches a tuna worth like ten thousand dollars or more,
23:39
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
23:42
Speaker 1: Uh if you get a big one. And um, so,
23:45
Speaker 1: like you said, they started going deeper and that's when
23:48
Speaker 1: they started getting this bycatch. And apparently esclar dwell on
23:52
Speaker 1: the bottom because they're poopy fish. They're called a snake mackerel.
23:58
Speaker 1: That's a good name. I need a snake mackerel. Would
24:00
Speaker 1: you sure that made you poop your pants? That gave
24:04
Speaker 1: you anal seepage? Well, it doesn't say that on the menu,
24:08
Speaker 1: although since I mentioned that, Uh. In two thousand four
24:13
Speaker 1: the state of Washington, Uh, they issued a bulletin on it,
24:16
Speaker 1: and they have I think some restaurants at least in
24:20
Speaker 1: the European Union like say on the packaging it can
24:24
Speaker 1: cause poopy pants. Right, there's a picture of a guy
24:27
Speaker 1: holding the seat of his pants in alarm with the
24:31
Speaker 1: universal symbol snake mackerel coming out of his butt, smoking
24:36
Speaker 1: a cigar. Oh boy, it is outright banded in Japan
24:40
Speaker 1: and Italy, so I love it. In Japan, you know,
24:43
Speaker 1: they're they're like, no, don't mess with our sushi. But
24:47
Speaker 1: people stand by it. There's um, I mean chef Eric Prepair,
24:51
Speaker 1: they mentioned this article like world renowned chef. He's he
24:54
Speaker 1: loves his stuff. Well, yeah, it cleans him out. But
24:58
Speaker 1: I guess you just don't serve it like too much.
25:00
Speaker 1: He's like, you go spend a weekend in a chili
25:02
Speaker 1: cook off, pounds of escal are on Sunday night and
25:07
Speaker 1: escalar shake growth. You have had it before, right, Yeah,
25:12
Speaker 1: butterfish is the perfect name. It's really delicious. It is amazing. Yeah,
25:16
Speaker 1: but yeah, apparently gets you. And for the part of
25:20
Speaker 1: the U s f D a um, they said that
25:24
Speaker 1: they request manufacturers informed buyers about the purgative effect toothless toothfishless. Yeah,
25:33
Speaker 1: should we take a break. Let's take a break, and
25:35
Speaker 1: then we'll come back and talk about why this actually
25:37
Speaker 1: matters and uh, how to combat this? So chuck, we
26:06
Speaker 1: we mentioned like the big thing billion dollars worth of
26:11
Speaker 1: losses or I guess rip offs in the United States
26:14
Speaker 1: alone every year, right, So that's I mean that's the
26:17
Speaker 1: basis of why people fight fish fraud. Somebody's getting ripped off,
26:22
Speaker 1: whether it's you, whether it's the restaurant tour you're buying from,
26:26
Speaker 1: whether it's just the distributor, whether it's all of you combined,
26:29
Speaker 1: you're getting ripped off and that's not cool. Well, yeah,
26:32
Speaker 1: because like we said, if if you like the taste
26:34
Speaker 1: of the fish, just call it that fish, the market
26:38
Speaker 1: price appropriately and maybe that price will go up naturally. Well,
26:41
Speaker 1: that's what happened I think with the Chilean sea bass. Yeah,
26:45
Speaker 1: I mean they renamed it, but it was it wasn't
26:47
Speaker 1: fraud necessarily. No demand drove the price up, you know, No, No,
26:51
Speaker 1: that wasn't That was just marketing. Yeah, but the demand
26:54
Speaker 1: was driven by the barn Asian marketing practics, you know. No, agreed,
27:00
Speaker 1: they weren't committing fraud, correct, they were just committing pr
27:05
Speaker 1: you know, good one. So being ripped off is a
27:11
Speaker 1: big one. There's also health concerns too. In addition to
27:15
Speaker 1: anal seepage, there are plenty of other things that can
27:18
Speaker 1: happen to you if you eat fish that is different
27:21
Speaker 1: from the fish that you're thinking you're eating. All kinds
27:23
Speaker 1: of seepage. All right, I see pitch gum seepage. I know.
27:28
Speaker 1: But people are allergic to certain kinds of fish. Um,
27:32
Speaker 1: so you might not know that you're eating something that's
27:34
Speaker 1: horrible to you'd be like, this is wah, who I
27:38
Speaker 1: thought it was telapia? Good one. Huh. Telappi is one
27:43
Speaker 1: of those. It's very much under fire for the farm
27:45
Speaker 1: raised practices, oh, because it's not very well raised. Yeah.
27:50
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly the deal, but I know that
27:53
Speaker 1: telappi is a very controversial fish to buy right now
27:56
Speaker 1: here in the US or out out of I think
27:58
Speaker 1: in the US, because everything I saw said like, fisheries
28:02
Speaker 1: used to be farm raised. Fisheries used to be um
28:06
Speaker 1: nasty in the US, but the Americans have really cleaned
28:09
Speaker 1: up our act lately. Yeah, I'll have to look it up.
28:11
Speaker 1: They there are plenty of articles called like the problem
28:15
Speaker 1: with telapia and stuff like that. And they don't call
28:18
Speaker 1: it the rat of the sea for nothing, do they?
28:22
Speaker 1: You just made it up? So uh. One of the
28:26
Speaker 1: other big problems is that fish are always being monitored
28:30
Speaker 1: for being over fished, and so if you don't know
28:34
Speaker 1: what's being sold and eaten, you can't get accurate numbers
28:37
Speaker 1: on what you're trying to protect. You might be eating
28:40
Speaker 1: an endangered fish. You might even be one of those
28:42
Speaker 1: people that carries a little card AOU in your wallet
28:45
Speaker 1: that says, you know, eat these responsible fish or I
28:49
Speaker 1: guess they're not responsible fish. Maybe they are responsibly my
28:53
Speaker 1: home that they provide for. Uh. But yeah, you might
28:57
Speaker 1: be eating something. You might be eating something that is
29:01
Speaker 1: seriously endangered and you don't even know. Yeah, And this
29:04
Speaker 1: article I think makes a pretty good point that, Um,
29:08
Speaker 1: there's a like, if you're pushing to save a fish
29:11
Speaker 1: species from being fish to extinction, you usually need public
29:15
Speaker 1: sentiment behind you in those in those cases right to
29:18
Speaker 1: be effective. Um, but if the public is out there
29:21
Speaker 1: like dude, I'm seeing snapper everywhere. Everybody's got snapper. It's
29:24
Speaker 1: not endangered, you hippie, go home, then your your your
29:29
Speaker 1: public relations thing is going to fail. Yeah. So that's
29:34
Speaker 1: another kind of indirect problem of easily overlooked problem, the
29:38
Speaker 1: perception that fish are healthier. Fish stocks are healthier than
29:42
Speaker 1: they actually are. Apparently the blue fin tuna stocks are
29:45
Speaker 1: going up a bit, which is good news. Yeah, that
29:48
Speaker 1: was that good thing about the bycatch like starting to
29:51
Speaker 1: market bycatch that it like took the pressure off of
29:54
Speaker 1: the original target fish that they were going after. So
29:59
Speaker 1: what can you do? They suggest buying whole fish. If
30:02
Speaker 1: you're not creeped out by that, um, you don't mind
30:06
Speaker 1: looking those little fellas in the eyeballs, then dead eyes
30:10
Speaker 1: by the whole fish, because it's much easier to tell
30:13
Speaker 1: what kind of fishes when it has a face. The
30:15
Speaker 1: thing is that's you have to know what a fish
30:18
Speaker 1: looks like. Then yeah, or have a computer hookup an
30:21
Speaker 1: internet connection. Are sure you know? But I mean, are
30:26
Speaker 1: you gonna take the fish home, look it up and
30:28
Speaker 1: then take it back and be like, this doesn't match
30:30
Speaker 1: the picture. No, you take out your phone in the store,
30:34
Speaker 1: google red snapper and if you think that guy doesn't
30:37
Speaker 1: look like a red snapper, or you know what, I
30:42
Speaker 1: bet there's an app or there should be an app
30:44
Speaker 1: called fish watch where you can take a picture of
30:47
Speaker 1: the fish in the store and then really annoy the
30:52
Speaker 1: fishmonger at your local market, challenging them with your app.
30:56
Speaker 1: When you catch them in the active fraud, you go
30:58
Speaker 1: fish watch, spin and run off. The other thing they
31:02
Speaker 1: say you can do is, uh, if you go to
31:06
Speaker 1: a restaurant and you want to pretend like you're in
31:09
Speaker 1: a Portlandia Sketch asks them about where the fish was
31:13
Speaker 1: caught or raised, how it was raised, how it was caught,
31:16
Speaker 1: what kind of nets were used, what area the ocean.
31:19
Speaker 1: What's the name of the man who cut its head off? Yeah,
31:22
Speaker 1: they say that's a legitimate thing you can do. Do
31:25
Speaker 1: you remember that song fish heads, fish heads, fish heads? Yeah? Heads?
31:30
Speaker 1: Which what was that? Do you too? It was like
31:33
Speaker 1: this duo and I can't remember their names, but one
31:36
Speaker 1: of the duo, one half of the duo was Little
31:39
Speaker 1: Will Robinson from um uh uh what's the name of
31:44
Speaker 1: that space? Yeah? I think I went down a internet
31:49
Speaker 1: rabbit hole on that song one time. It's a great song,
31:52
Speaker 1: but it wasn't it just like it's sort of in
31:54
Speaker 1: the new wave era. It's like late seventies, early eighties.
31:59
Speaker 1: It was um with a residence then Yeah, yeah, than
32:03
Speaker 1: anything than new wave? You know. Interesting? Did you ever
32:07
Speaker 1: see that episode of Chips where they basically spend the
32:11
Speaker 1: whole episode trying to explain the difference between punk rockers
32:14
Speaker 1: who are criminals and new waivers who are just there
32:17
Speaker 1: to have fun. Good Yeah, maybe you know the actor
32:20
Speaker 1: William forsythe sure. He plays a punk with like a
32:24
Speaker 1: green mohawk, who like, I think he's taken pot shots
32:27
Speaker 1: of people on the highway, like an embankment with his rifle. Yeah,
32:31
Speaker 1: because you know punks are snipers in the weight. Yeah, yeah,
32:35
Speaker 1: it's pretty funny. And then punches trying to date this
32:37
Speaker 1: new wave girl who's explaining to him the difference. It's
32:40
Speaker 1: a good, good episode. As as usual with Chips, there
32:43
Speaker 1: was some angle with punch in the lady. Yeah, hey,
32:48
Speaker 1: I think you're kind of freaky, but let's state I
32:51
Speaker 1: told you I worked with him one time, right, and
32:55
Speaker 1: he kept arresting people. Well he would that would. I
32:57
Speaker 1: asked him if he would arrest me for a photo
33:00
Speaker 1: and he was like, yeah, sure, put me up against
33:03
Speaker 1: the car, Like why are your handcuffs fuzzy? He very
33:07
Speaker 1: much enjoyed being punched though. He was into it, Like
33:09
Speaker 1: all the ladies came out in the neighborhood still and
33:11
Speaker 1: they're like Erica Strata. He's like that's right, right, and
33:15
Speaker 1: his hair quivered. He's like, do we have any punk
33:18
Speaker 1: or new Waivers in the neighborhood. You gotta see that
33:22
Speaker 1: up man, it's good. That was a great show. Maybe
33:25
Speaker 1: the best theme song of all time too, that's pretty good.
33:30
Speaker 1: Didn't we try to model our own TV show theme
33:32
Speaker 1: song after that? But then didn't? Wasn't that the original idea?
33:35
Speaker 1: It was like to make it like Chips. Oh no,
33:37
Speaker 1: it was a different show. What was it? It was
33:43
Speaker 1: like it was supposed to be like a takeoff and
33:46
Speaker 1: one of the one of the great legendary TV shows openings.
33:50
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was, but we did do
33:52
Speaker 1: the liver and up and down thing, but I don't
33:55
Speaker 1: remember what it was. Maybe Chad can tell us. We
34:00
Speaker 1: failed on so many levels there, it's pretty remarkable. Um,
34:06
Speaker 1: Chad's the director of the show, by the way, case
34:09
Speaker 1: you don't know Chad. Uh So. There was a task
34:13
Speaker 1: force that President Obama put together in December of last
34:18
Speaker 1: year that UM and I always wonder about these when
34:22
Speaker 1: they say things like I'm going to call for better
34:24
Speaker 1: international cooperation and collaboration, right, Like, I know there are
34:29
Speaker 1: more details to that that probably make it seem like
34:32
Speaker 1: it has teeth, But when you hear that, it kind
34:34
Speaker 1: of feels like, is that really going to do anything?
34:38
Speaker 1: Like when Rubber meets the road and these people are
34:41
Speaker 1: out there fishing in the deep ocean. Like always said,
34:44
Speaker 1: we needed to cooperate and collaborate, So let's do it,
34:49
Speaker 1: you know, like enforcement is what we need. Well, there's
34:53
Speaker 1: these guys who are trying to get the enforcement end
34:55
Speaker 1: down chuck down at the University of South Florida. They've
35:00
Speaker 1: come up with, basically, um, a little module called grouper Check. Yeah.
35:08
Speaker 1: Their names are John Paul and Robert Ulric, which I
35:12
Speaker 1: wanted to be Robert yuruck so bad. I kept thinking,
35:16
Speaker 1: wasn't that the guy's name, but I was mixing up
35:17
Speaker 1: Skeet uld Rich with Robert. This is the second career. Yeah,
35:22
Speaker 1: it might be the same person for all I know.
35:24
Speaker 1: But apparently this little thing looks like an external hard
35:27
Speaker 1: drive plugged into a laptop a module and it can
35:30
Speaker 1: tests four samples at a time, even if they have
35:33
Speaker 1: sauce on them already, and it takes uh, which means
35:36
Speaker 1: that you're sitting at the table running a test, a
35:40
Speaker 1: DNA test on your dinner. Yeah, that's what you do.
35:43
Speaker 1: You go in the restaurant and slip it. That's what
35:45
Speaker 1: this that That woman who led the Oceana study says
35:48
Speaker 1: that she there was a great Atlantic article. She seens
35:51
Speaker 1: that sneak in. She goes into restaurants with little zip
35:54
Speaker 1: blocks and you know, just puts a little bits of
35:56
Speaker 1: ficient there. But the people who are with like, you
36:00
Speaker 1: don't have to put in your mouth first, spit it
36:02
Speaker 1: out and just put it in the bag directly. So
36:04
Speaker 1: the grouper check machine UM works in forty five minutes,
36:08
Speaker 1: which is the only thing it checks for is whether
36:11
Speaker 1: it's a grouper. It goes ding it's grouper, and then
36:15
Speaker 1: you go, oh, no, my grouper is cold. Yeah, exactly,
36:20
Speaker 1: fish stew. That's your answer there, UM. But they are
36:24
Speaker 1: working on many other types of checkers for other types
36:29
Speaker 1: of fish. UM. The big problem with DNA sequencing is
36:33
Speaker 1: it takes at least twelve hours two uh to do it,
36:38
Speaker 1: you know, through DNA. So it's just not happening. No
36:41
Speaker 1: one's DNA sequencing for twelve hours on all these ships
36:45
Speaker 1: all over the world. Like fish fraud. I don't I
36:48
Speaker 1: don't see how they can fix it. Get it down
36:51
Speaker 1: to forty five minutes, get them in the hands of
36:53
Speaker 1: inspectors and more inspectors. We're gonna bust you, buddy. Yeah,
37:00
Speaker 1: in a Canadian fraudulent fish guy. Is that the idea
37:03
Speaker 1: is that fear will be stricken into the hearts of
37:06
Speaker 1: these fisher people. I think so, and that they will say,
37:09
Speaker 1: you know them fisher people scared really easy. Yeah, that's true.
37:12
Speaker 1: I've seen jaws right, they buckle at the first sign
37:17
Speaker 1: of trouble. That's anything else. No, I'm good man, that
37:21
Speaker 1: was fish fraud. Yeah, and shout out to that great
37:24
Speaker 1: article in The Atlantic appropriately. Yeah, and check out the
37:28
Speaker 1: bait and switch I think. Yeah, that's very clever title. Yeah,
37:32
Speaker 1: check out that Oceana map to um and go to
37:35
Speaker 1: go to your city and they will have some compiled
37:37
Speaker 1: studies from all over the world. And you can avoid
37:40
Speaker 1: those restaurants if you want, right, or support it if
37:45
Speaker 1: you want. You're like, I love fish fraud. That's it.
37:50
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about fish fraud, type
37:52
Speaker 1: those words in the search part how stuff works dot com.
37:55
Speaker 1: I said fraud. It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
38:01
Speaker 1: call this hunting response. Remember we talked about hunting and
38:05
Speaker 1: what was it? Polar bears and we don't get it.
38:09
Speaker 1: But I certainly knew that there would be some good
38:11
Speaker 1: arguments from some of the back to nature, folks, back
38:15
Speaker 1: to nature featuring guns. Hey guys. Grew up in suburbia
38:20
Speaker 1: and moved to the big city for college and finally
38:22
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to move out to the sticks again
38:24
Speaker 1: when my wife finished grad school and took a job.
38:26
Speaker 1: We were committed to getting back to nature living more simply,
38:29
Speaker 1: so we raised pigs and chickens for meat and eggs
38:32
Speaker 1: in every autumni hunt for deer and elk. Going on
38:35
Speaker 1: my fourth year here and this is in Montana, by
38:38
Speaker 1: the way, Uh, the meat I hunt is organic and
38:41
Speaker 1: free range. It lived one to three years as a
38:43
Speaker 1: wild animal rather than in a cramped pin with a
38:46
Speaker 1: dung matted floor. I was eliminated by a predator, albeit
38:51
Speaker 1: with the help of a rifle. But after pulling a trigger,
38:54
Speaker 1: it will stop breathing within two minutes. Uh. This is
38:56
Speaker 1: an extremely quick death for a prey animal that may
39:00
Speaker 1: otherwise be bled to death or jumped by a pack
39:02
Speaker 1: of coyotes. The winter will kill off many of these
39:05
Speaker 1: animals anyway via the cold, starvation, disease or infection, and
39:09
Speaker 1: the hunting license that allows me to take an animal
39:12
Speaker 1: indicates a gender and species, so the fish and game
39:15
Speaker 1: can manage herd numbers. Fawns and pregnant animals are never taken,
39:19
Speaker 1: most often young males are as they will have the
39:22
Speaker 1: least impact on her population. Uh. It is a difficult
39:25
Speaker 1: thing to do to pull the trigger to get the
39:27
Speaker 1: shakes every time. Still, but I'm satisfied that my family
39:30
Speaker 1: will have a healthy and natural meat for dinner for
39:33
Speaker 1: the winter, and grateful to the animal that provided it.
39:36
Speaker 1: I suppose I could just go down to my local
39:38
Speaker 1: mega mart and by the sterile white package from behind
39:41
Speaker 1: the glass. That just doesn't feel right to me anymore.
39:44
Speaker 1: That is from Jason for Montana, And those are very
39:47
Speaker 1: good points Jason. Although you could argue that he could
39:52
Speaker 1: just wait until winter comes and go collect the dead
39:55
Speaker 1: bodies of the the deer and elk. I don't know
39:58
Speaker 1: that it works that way. I mean, they gotta fall
40:01
Speaker 1: over somewhere right then everybody wins. Blame it on mother nature.
40:06
Speaker 1: You just happened to be there when they fell over.
40:10
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Jason, Um and everybody who wrote in
40:12
Speaker 1: to talk to us about hunting. Um. You can get
40:16
Speaker 1: in touch with us, try to persuade us to see
40:18
Speaker 1: things your way by tweeting to us at s Y
40:21
Speaker 1: s K podcast, or you can hang out with me
40:23
Speaker 1: at josh um Clark. You can hang out with Chuck
40:25
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or Facebook dot
40:28
Speaker 1: com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us
40:31
Speaker 1: both the email The Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
40:33
Speaker 1: dot com and has always joined us at our home
40:35
Speaker 1: on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
40:43
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
40:45
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com