October 18, 2016 • 40 mins
Fish fraud, misrepresenting a fish as a more expensive one, costs Americans $25 billion a year. And because less than 100 inspectors check for fraud in the US and everyone from wholesalers to sushi restaurants are free to rip off their customers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:23):
it professional, make it beautiful. Welcome to you Stuff you
should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. Jerry's to my right, different things rolling, feeling easy.
(00:46):
So this is stuff you should know. Is that really Jerry?
Is it just Jerry the tooth pitch? Perhaps we've been
fooled this entire time. Yeah, I mean we'd have to
do a DNA test. Yeah, Jerry, I just made air quotes. Everybody.
Can we swab your mouth? I don't think we need to.
(01:08):
Her spittle is all over this room. She spits on
our microphones when we leave every day. I'm sure she does.
I'm I'm I've never been more convinced of anything. Some
days more than others. Uh, well that was just a
little um play acting what I was all in. Jerry's
(01:30):
a real human, She's not a toothfish. Oh yeah, but
you know it is a toothfish. Yeah, Chilean sea baths.
That's right, dude, We've just said that before. I feel
like it was in our in the TV show, so
like eight people at least heard it there. Let's see
my wife your wife. Uh yeah, we for sure mentioned
(01:53):
it on the TV show, and I feel like we've
mentioned it before. Everyone knows by now, right, because that's
one of those facts that people love to drop at
a dinner party, like, you know, what you're eating filth. Yeah,
it's delicious. Toothfish is what it is, right, you know. Yeah.
But I mean if you like, if a fish is
called a Patagonian toothfish, but it tastes delicious, then yeah,
(02:17):
there's really nothing wrong with just changing the name. Correct.
The problem comes when people get ripped off for paying
more money for something they think it is and it's not.
That is actually a surprisingly enormous problem. It turns out
it's called fish fraud or seafood fraud, and there's some
(02:37):
sheriff's on the case they're called Oceana. Yeah, they did it.
They're a great organization, by the way, they're fantastic. They
did this big study led by a woman named Kimberly
Warner in two thousand twelve because they knew everyone knew.
This was no surprise that fish are purposefully mislabeled a
(02:59):
lot of time by well, it kind of depends. I mean,
it could be the fisher person, could be the the
company they worked for. It could be the people that
they sell to at the docks. The wholesalers could be distributors,
could be the restaurant tour or the grocer you're buying
from who goes in the back and like stifles a
(03:22):
chuckle because you just paid seven times what that fish
is actually worth. I'm sure because you thought it was
something else. It does happen, and so, like you said,
everybody knows that this happened. But the Oceanic study was
it revealed just how widespread it was. Yeah, they reported
that thirty three of the fish it tested in restaurants
(03:45):
and markets were not the fish that the fish said
they were. It gets worse. That's everything they tested that
was the average, right, So fully a third of all
the samples, and they took like forty seven samples six
hundred and many five restaurants in twenty one states across
the US. They found that in sushi restaurants in particular,
(04:10):
of the food samples were mislabeled. And if so, you say, well,
seventy of sushi restaurants do that, no of samples of
the sushi restaurants sold mislabeled fish. Yeah, like this isn't mackerel,
it's ground beef. And a hundred percent d percent of
(04:30):
the hammachi, the yellowtail was mislabeled. None of it was
actual yellowtail. Yeah. And and just at the sushi restaurants
of Hamachi. Yeah, there's a new place in Atlanta that
I went to recently called Brush that I already mentioned this.
It's the best sushi I've ever had, probably really and
(04:53):
it's the most expensive shi I've ever had. It's called Brush. Yeah,
where is it? It's Indicator and it's Um. I mean
it's really pricey. Have you been to Umi? No, stuff,
haven't been there, but like i'd be interested in compared
to a single piece piece of sushi, is like twelve
bucks shushi for twelve sushi sandwich, you know, yeah, that's
(05:14):
pretty expensive sushi. Yeah, I mean we dropped for a
regular meal, way too much money. But do you do
when you walked out of there? This is the key.
When you walked out of there, did you feel like
you've gotten your money's worth? Or were you slightly irritated? No?
It was It was the most delicious sushi I've ever had. Cool.
But here's the deal. They just give you. I thought
(05:36):
we talked about this. Maybe not. Um, you're confusing me
with you know how their podcast. I love to over
soy my sushi. That's how I like it. But they
don't let you do that. They don't give you soy
sauce at all. And then if you ask for it,
that good. You know my views on untaste, Yeah, do
(05:56):
it the way I say it. But if you request it,
they of you a little spray bottle. Yeah, well they're
serious about this tiny little spray bottle that you can
spray on your things. So did you like get a
cramp spraying soy sauce on your sushi? Now? I unscrewed it,
and that's awesome. If I'm gonna pay two meal, sure
you should be able to eat it. How you want
(06:16):
to agree exactly. That's like, I don't know, come to
a hot dog place, You're like, you really don't think
you should put catchup on there, So we're not going
to have that for you, you know, or they give
you a spray bottle cap, it won't work, that's right. Okay,
Well there's some good free buzz marketing for brush. Frankly,
I think you owe us both the gift card. Yeah,
(06:37):
but my point was you would think, I mean, there
was sabby was real. You would think that they that
everything was as advertised when you go to a place
at night. The problem is man like they they may
believe that, and the people that they bought it from
me believe it. But I was reading the Sociana study
and they said that I think even more than of
(06:59):
the seafood imported in the US, and that's most of
the seafoo in the US we impored, almost all of
it is processed at sea. And I was like, what
does that mean? And I went and searched like fish
processing at sea and I found this little twelve minute
like Yankee documentary about I think like Norwegian or some
(07:19):
sort of Scandinavian fisher trawler where they start with the
catch had this huge net of I'm not quite sure
what kind of fish it was, but it was generally
the same fish that they Um, what you didn't know
what kind of fishing right right, Well, yeah, I'm getting
to that. Then they dump them into like the fish
sorting things, right, and then um they start processing. They
(07:43):
have a whole processing plant in the on the boat
and so by the time these guys get to shore,
these things are already frozen salid in blocks, packaged in boxes.
So the people who are buying it have to be like, okay,
it says on the box this, I'm gonna trust you
and give me, you know, half a million or a
(08:04):
million pounds of that stuff because I'm a distributor. And
if they're not truthful, the fisher people aren't truth truthful,
then the whole supply line is infected and it's very
tough to verify it is. Oceania has a map, by
the way, if you go to their website and just
google fish fraud, Oceania will go right there and they
have a handy map where you can click on It's
(08:26):
all over the world. It's not a US problem, um,
and you can click on like Atlanta, Georgia. If that's
where you live. And UM, what it will do is
linked to UH. If they don't have a study from
the restaurants, they will link to other source studies that
they've compiled. And there was one that was a link
to UH. A j c our newspaper or had an
(08:46):
article about local restaurants. You know, when they do that,
the expose a thing. We visited eight local restaurants and
they called them out by name. And of course these
people are like, well, I didn't know, right, So and
I think a lot of times they probably don't know.
I would guess probably most of the time they don't know. Yeah,
you know. I mean if you're if you're dealing directly
with the end consumer, you're you're probably going to be
(09:09):
less likely to engage in fraud, you know. Um. And
if this sounds like a not big deal, it's a
billion dollar fraud and dollars annually in fraud in America alone, Yeah,
just the United States, that's right. So yeah. And the
reason why it's billion dollars worth of frauds because we
(09:30):
spend a lot of money on seafood. Um it's good
for you, right, And the number one driver of UM
seafood fraud is misrepresenting something like as an expensive fish
in replacing it with the fish that's much less expensive.
That's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. The
FDA does have laws, UM, but the problem is one
(09:55):
of the problem UH problems is less than one percent
of all the fish that are in ordered, less than
one percent is inspected. So one percent of all the
fish and seafood eaten in the United States is inspective
for fraud. Yeah, and the and the ten percent. I mean,
one of the tips that will give you later I'll
(10:16):
go ahead and say now is if you buy local
fish or fish from the United States, you're far less
likely to be UH frauded defrauded. Yeah, defrauded, which doesn't
make any sense. It's like inflammable. Yeah. But um, apparently
the US internally does a pretty good job keeping it
above board, but like you said, comes from elsewhere. So
(10:39):
that's the issue and one of the reasons why it's
um that the f D a UM or the United
States I should say, the federal government has so much
trouble inspecting imported fish because there's apparently like ninety agents
tasked with inspecting all of the fish that's imported into
the United States. Yeah, inty people. Yeah, and that's the
(11:02):
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in o a A. Noah
is who's doing this. Um, And they're doing the best
they can. But ninety people. It's like I didn't get
numbers on how much of our imported fishes, but I
mean it's got to be like foounds maybe maybe even
up to a thousand, so there's no way they can
(11:24):
test all these fish. Um. What's funny in the Sociana
UM study, and I should say this is from two twelve.
I think this made the news several years ago and
we're bringing it back. Um, they're they're the worst offenders
as far as seafood frog go. We're Thailand and Vietnam.
But Canada was mentioned in there. What Yeah, oh Canada.
(11:49):
I know that's what I say to Yeah, they apparently
don't have nearly as stringent aquaculture laws as we do
in the US. I know that's what I said too.
There are such nice people, though I would have thought
would be the opposite, you know, Yeah, maybe that's what
it is. Maybe they're like, we don't need laws. Of course,
we're not going to defraud. You were Canadians and maybe
(12:09):
it's just a mistake. They're like looks like a god
to me, a you know, like they're not intentionally defrauding people,
because Canadians don't do that. Uh. All right, well let's
take a break and we're gonna talk about, um kind
of how this is done right after this. All right,
(12:50):
So I promised to tell you how this is done. Um.
One of the big ways and reasons this can happen
is that a lot of the time him these fake fish,
they're real fish, fraudulent fish, unless it's that fake crab stuff, right,
which is still fish. Oh yeah it is, isn't it.
It's like white fish in it. Um, it's like string
(13:13):
cheese crab. It's still delicious. I love it. Do you
like it? I'm not big on it, yeah, I mean,
of course I always prefer the real thing. I had
too much when I was a kid. I think. Yeah,
I do a pretty good uh kind of red nicky
crab dip with it. Oh yeah, it's just delicious, just
like mayonnaise and what's the shirt and stuff? It is good. Uh.
I will say this is like as red nicky as
(13:34):
it is when I have it at places like parties,
People like it's like crack. Even high society types, Yep,
they can't get enough of it. They're like, what's in this?
And I go Duke's mayonnaise and fake crab what? Alright?
So what was pop out they do? Oh? Yeah. The
reason why this happens is a lot of these fraudulent
(13:55):
fish are they come to you as filet's. They don't
have the head in the tail and the skin and
all those things, and you can't or maybe the skin,
but people don't know this. Really. This goes to that
um processing, right, So, like these guys just dumped a
net full of fish down these shoots, and the first
thing they did was the things went um perpendicular down
(14:19):
a conveyor belt, right, So rather than facing the direction
that the conveyor conveyor belt was going, they were perpendicular
in that direction. And it just so happened that along
that conveyor belt was a big circular saw that was
exactly where their head was placed. So it just cuts
their heads right off, right, You can identify that fish
very easily. Then it goes into the body splitter and gutter,
(14:40):
then the fil ayer and seriously, I was watching this,
I'm like, that is that the same kind of fish,
and yet they were ending up in the same like
batch of fish that was being sold in package together.
So I was looking around to see, like, who's keeping
up with this? And again at sea, nobody's keeping up
(15:01):
with it. Of course not right. So like in the
United States and in other countries, there are people who, um,
who are overseeing this stuff, and sorting fish is a
it's a big deal, but it's also a pain, right,
because if you get what's called bycatch in your in
your in your catch, yeah, in your nets, like you
(15:22):
don't if you're if you're shopping for tuna, you don't
want dolphin, you know, if you're fishing for tuna and
you and you hauling a big net, like you're gonna
have all kinds of stuff in there. Yeah. And apparently
we read this little Mother Jones article two. Did you
read that? So? Um, Apparently this is a fairly recent
phenomenon by catch, right, because in like the sixties or seventies,
(15:45):
they started using much longer line, so they were catching
much deeper fish, and they were also by catching fish
that they didn't normally catch before, including the Patagonian toothfish.
So these guys are bringing up so much bycatch, and
it's such a pain to just sort this stuff and
then basically throw it away. They're like, we should rename
(16:07):
this thing and like create a market for it. So
they did. So they renamed Patagonian toothfish Chilean sea bass,
and all of a sudden, there's a big market for it.
The irony is now they're over fishing Chilean sea baths
Patagonian toothfish. They need to change the name back again.
(16:29):
Uh all right, well, here's here's a list, and we're
gonna get to that other. I know, if you tease
someone with something like exlex fish, it's always good to
come back to that. But we will list out a
few of the things that are most often substituted. Um
Pacific cod or Alaskan cod. Um. A lot of times
(16:50):
you're gonna be getting Asian catfish, or maybe a thread
fan slickhead, or maybe even silapia thread finn slickheads or
a diamond dozen. Uh, Pacific alibu, you might get Atlantic alibu,
Atlantic cod, you might get Pacific cod. Yeah. Groupers a
big one. Yeah. Groupers apparently the most swapped out fish,
(17:12):
the most fraudulent fish of all I think because the
markup is so great. The markup is great, but also
because the FDA is doing some weird stuff. So the
FDA determines what's food in America, and there's like species
of fish that qualify as food that marketable food. Right, grouper.
(17:32):
There's something like sixties six species and twelve different geni
um of fish that can be sold as just grouper
in America. So not only is it expensive, but it's
also um. There's a lot of confusion, so most most
restaurateurs won't be like, well, that's that's not grouper, that's
(17:53):
um um Asian catfish. Yeah. They'd be like, well that's
the type of grouper, Okay, but it's not in that case. Yeah,
but yeah, you're right, it's it's it's there are that
many kinds of one fish. It's probably hard to regulate,
harder to regulate, and I think the market they said
it's like four times if you are if you're selling
Asian catfish, it's gonna be a four times markup for grouper. Right,
(18:17):
So if you're impoverished fisher person, you'll say, yeah, maybe
this ship man grouper, red snapper, Right, you want to
see if you see like a box with grouper and
a question markt be wary of that one red snapper.
Be aware you might be eating crimson snapper instead. That's
(18:40):
a big, big problem. Or tilapia. Yeah, and then salmon,
of course there there's a wide range of salmon and
a wide range of prices according to what kind of
salmon it is. And it's all farmed Atlantic salmon, well
it could be for apparently that's ah, that's what they
switch all of them out with. Like, if you think
(19:01):
you're getting a Copper River salmon, it's probably Copper River
salmon because that's here in the US. Sure, But if
you think, oh, look at that that ski over there,
it's beautiful, don't don't see his face, but it's probably
Atlantic salmon. Yeah. And at first I was like, I
(19:22):
don't understand how they could swap out salmon because it's
so just distinctive. But now I get it, because you
think it's like a wild caught Alaskan salmon, and it's
it was, you know, farmed in some guy's backyard in Louisiana,
you know. And I was looking to see what the
difference is between wild caught and farmed fish Apparently for
(19:44):
every pro on one side, there's a con as well,
And if you kind of go down the list, they
pretty much even out one another. Um. A lot of
the old unsustainable practices like get this, so to feed fish,
they will go out and catch smaller fish and then
feed the smaller fish to the bigger fish, which is
(20:07):
stupid because you're going and getting all of the babies
from fish nurseries that and they won't grow up any longer.
They figured out that you can feed them a combination
of worms and algae and that has basically the same
amount of nutrients, but it's what more too expensive or
not as easy or something, I don't know, I don't know.
(20:28):
But similarly, right um, they're like, well, you know, there's
a lot of runoff and farms and stuff that that
can pollute the fishery. Um, but the same thing can
be true for like actual like wild coots fish as well.
So there's like this weird give and take, and they
seem to totally equal out. Yeah, So as far as
the most mislabeled in the oceanic study, at least of
(20:53):
snapper samples that they found were mislabeled, and that was
the number one mislabeled fish. In their study that year,
tuna was number two. It's fifty nine. That's that's like
close to the tuna almost there. Yeah, and white tuna
is is a big reason why. Um, we've all probably
had albacore delicious albacore. Um. And white tuna is not
(21:17):
even a fish. So if you go to anywhere but
a sushi place, it says white tuna. UM, say like,
well that's not a fish. What is this would be like,
it's white tuna. Stop asking questions. Yeah, they'll take your
soy sauce away, give you mustard instead of a sabi
in a bottle. Um. But yeah, it's not even a
(21:38):
real fish. So um uh esclar is the fish that
we've been teasing this whole time, the ex lax fish. Yes,
and I love this fish. I do too. I didn't
realize it was that I've eaten it his butterfish many
a time. Yeah. What are the other names for it? Butterfish, um,
(21:58):
white tuna, Hawaiian wallo. Yeah, that's it. That's very misleading.
Rudder fish. Rudder fish sounds inedible itself. You know, sure,
I wouldn't need a rudder fish. I'd be like get
this off the menu. I think Escolar sounds like very fancy. Yeah,
like it makes your pinky go up when you say it,
you know, yeah, like Escalar, Yeah, because it sounds like Escobar.
(22:20):
And he was the best drug king pin of all time. Sure, yeah,
he was the fancy drug king But I guess Escalar.
People know it's a dirty little secret, which is that
there is an oil, uh this wax esther that makes
it taste delicious and it's not digestible by us. So
if you eat more like in little tiny sushi portions,
(22:43):
it's it's okay, but if you get enough of it,
you're gonna have the poopy pants by enough of it,
like a filet can do it supply? Probably? Yeah, Like
anal seepage apparently is the result of eating this stuff. Yeah,
say I didn't he didn't know. I did. People need
(23:04):
to be informed. Uh Yeah. So what happened was, um
people started blue fin tuna, as everyone knows, is very
expensive now because there's not as much of it. So
vy blue fin tuna was about fourteen cents a pound
on the wholesale market, and UM it varies now. In
two thousand and fifteen it was eight to twelve bucks
(23:26):
a pound, and in two thousand and fourteen it was
actually higher, it was ten to fifteen dollars a pound.
That's why you see these crazy reports like a fisherman
catches a tuna worth like ten thousand dollars or more,
you know, because it's like hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
Uh if you get a big one. And um, so,
like you said, they started going deeper and that's when
(23:48):
they started getting this bycatch. And apparently esclar dwell on
the bottom because they're poopy fish. They're called a snake mackerel.
That's a good name. I need a snake mackerel. Would
you sure that made you poop your pants? That gave
you anal seepage? Well, it doesn't say that on the menu,
(24:08):
although since I mentioned that, Uh. In two thousand four
the state of Washington, Uh, they issued a bulletin on it,
and they have I think some restaurants at least in
the European Union like say on the packaging it can
cause poopy pants. Right, there's a picture of a guy
holding the seat of his pants in alarm with the
(24:31):
universal symbol snake mackerel coming out of his butt, smoking
a cigar. Oh boy, it is outright banded in Japan
and Italy, so I love it. In Japan, you know,
they're they're like, no, don't mess with our sushi. But
people stand by it. There's um, I mean chef Eric Prepair,
they mentioned this article like world renowned chef. He's he
(24:54):
loves his stuff. Well, yeah, it cleans him out. But
I guess you just don't serve it like too much.
He's like, you go spend a weekend in a chili
cook off, pounds of escal are on Sunday night and
escalar shake growth. You have had it before, right, Yeah,
butterfish is the perfect name. It's really delicious. It is amazing. Yeah,
(25:16):
but yeah, apparently gets you. And for the part of
the U s f D a um, they said that
they request manufacturers informed buyers about the purgative effect toothless toothfishless. Yeah,
should we take a break. Let's take a break, and
then we'll come back and talk about why this actually
(25:37):
matters and uh, how to combat this? So chuck, we
(26:06):
we mentioned like the big thing billion dollars worth of
losses or I guess rip offs in the United States
alone every year, right, So that's I mean that's the
basis of why people fight fish fraud. Somebody's getting ripped off,
whether it's you, whether it's the restaurant tour you're buying from,
whether it's just the distributor, whether it's all of you combined,
(26:29):
you're getting ripped off and that's not cool. Well, yeah,
because like we said, if if you like the taste
of the fish, just call it that fish, the market
price appropriately and maybe that price will go up naturally. Well,
that's what happened I think with the Chilean sea bass. Yeah,
I mean they renamed it, but it was it wasn't
fraud necessarily. No demand drove the price up, you know, No, No,
(26:51):
that wasn't That was just marketing. Yeah, but the demand
was driven by the barn Asian marketing practics, you know. No, agreed,
they weren't committing fraud, correct, they were just committing pr
you know, good one. So being ripped off is a
big one. There's also health concerns too. In addition to
(27:15):
anal seepage, there are plenty of other things that can
happen to you if you eat fish that is different
from the fish that you're thinking you're eating. All kinds
of seepage. All right, I see pitch gum seepage. I know.
But people are allergic to certain kinds of fish. Um,
so you might not know that you're eating something that's
horrible to you'd be like, this is wah, who I
(27:38):
thought it was telapia? Good one. Huh. Telappi is one
of those. It's very much under fire for the farm
raised practices, oh, because it's not very well raised. Yeah.
I don't know exactly the deal, but I know that
telappi is a very controversial fish to buy right now
here in the US or out out of I think
(27:58):
in the US, because everything I saw said like, fisheries
used to be farm raised. Fisheries used to be um
nasty in the US, but the Americans have really cleaned
up our act lately. Yeah, I'll have to look it up.
They there are plenty of articles called like the problem
with telapia and stuff like that. And they don't call
it the rat of the sea for nothing, do they?
(28:22):
You just made it up? So uh. One of the
other big problems is that fish are always being monitored
for being over fished, and so if you don't know
what's being sold and eaten, you can't get accurate numbers
on what you're trying to protect. You might be eating
an endangered fish. You might even be one of those
(28:42):
people that carries a little card AOU in your wallet
that says, you know, eat these responsible fish or I
guess they're not responsible fish. Maybe they are responsibly my
home that they provide for. Uh. But yeah, you might
be eating something. You might be eating something that is
seriously endangered and you don't even know. Yeah, And this
(29:04):
article I think makes a pretty good point that, Um,
there's a like, if you're pushing to save a fish
species from being fish to extinction, you usually need public
sentiment behind you in those in those cases right to
be effective. Um, but if the public is out there
like dude, I'm seeing snapper everywhere. Everybody's got snapper. It's
(29:24):
not endangered, you hippie, go home, then your your your
public relations thing is going to fail. Yeah. So that's
another kind of indirect problem of easily overlooked problem, the
perception that fish are healthier. Fish stocks are healthier than
they actually are. Apparently the blue fin tuna stocks are
(29:45):
going up a bit, which is good news. Yeah, that
was that good thing about the bycatch like starting to
market bycatch that it like took the pressure off of
the original target fish that they were going after. So
what can you do? They suggest buying whole fish. If
you're not creeped out by that, um, you don't mind
(30:06):
looking those little fellas in the eyeballs, then dead eyes
by the whole fish, because it's much easier to tell
what kind of fishes when it has a face. The
thing is that's you have to know what a fish
looks like. Then yeah, or have a computer hookup an
internet connection. Are sure you know? But I mean, are
you gonna take the fish home, look it up and
(30:28):
then take it back and be like, this doesn't match
the picture. No, you take out your phone in the store,
google red snapper and if you think that guy doesn't
look like a red snapper, or you know what, I
bet there's an app or there should be an app
called fish watch where you can take a picture of
the fish in the store and then really annoy the
(30:52):
fishmonger at your local market, challenging them with your app.
When you catch them in the active fraud, you go
fish watch, spin and run off. The other thing they
say you can do is, uh, if you go to
a restaurant and you want to pretend like you're in
a Portlandia Sketch asks them about where the fish was
(31:13):
caught or raised, how it was raised, how it was caught,
what kind of nets were used, what area the ocean.
What's the name of the man who cut its head off? Yeah,
they say that's a legitimate thing you can do. Do
you remember that song fish heads, fish heads, fish heads? Yeah? Heads?
Which what was that? Do you too? It was like
(31:33):
this duo and I can't remember their names, but one
of the duo, one half of the duo was Little
Will Robinson from um uh uh what's the name of
that space? Yeah? I think I went down a internet
rabbit hole on that song one time. It's a great song,
but it wasn't it just like it's sort of in
(31:54):
the new wave era. It's like late seventies, early eighties.
It was um with a residence then Yeah, yeah, than
anything than new wave? You know. Interesting? Did you ever
see that episode of Chips where they basically spend the
whole episode trying to explain the difference between punk rockers
(32:14):
who are criminals and new waivers who are just there
to have fun. Good Yeah, maybe you know the actor
William forsythe sure. He plays a punk with like a
green mohawk, who like, I think he's taken pot shots
of people on the highway, like an embankment with his rifle. Yeah,
because you know punks are snipers in the weight. Yeah, yeah,
(32:35):
it's pretty funny. And then punches trying to date this
new wave girl who's explaining to him the difference. It's
a good, good episode. As as usual with Chips, there
was some angle with punch in the lady. Yeah, hey,
I think you're kind of freaky, but let's state I
told you I worked with him one time, right, and
he kept arresting people. Well he would that would. I
(32:57):
asked him if he would arrest me for a photo
and he was like, yeah, sure, put me up against
the car, Like why are your handcuffs fuzzy? He very
much enjoyed being punched though. He was into it, Like
all the ladies came out in the neighborhood still and
they're like Erica Strata. He's like that's right, right, and
his hair quivered. He's like, do we have any punk
(33:18):
or new Waivers in the neighborhood. You gotta see that
up man, it's good. That was a great show. Maybe
the best theme song of all time too, that's pretty good.
Didn't we try to model our own TV show theme
song after that? But then didn't? Wasn't that the original idea?
It was like to make it like Chips. Oh no,
it was a different show. What was it? It was
(33:43):
like it was supposed to be like a takeoff and
one of the one of the great legendary TV shows openings.
I don't remember what it was, but we did do
the liver and up and down thing, but I don't
remember what it was. Maybe Chad can tell us. We
failed on so many levels there, it's pretty remarkable. Um,
(34:06):
Chad's the director of the show, by the way, case
you don't know Chad. Uh So. There was a task
force that President Obama put together in December of last
year that UM and I always wonder about these when
they say things like I'm going to call for better
international cooperation and collaboration, right, Like, I know there are
(34:29):
more details to that that probably make it seem like
it has teeth, But when you hear that, it kind
of feels like, is that really going to do anything?
Like when Rubber meets the road and these people are
out there fishing in the deep ocean. Like always said,
we needed to cooperate and collaborate, So let's do it,
you know, like enforcement is what we need. Well, there's
(34:53):
these guys who are trying to get the enforcement end
down chuck down at the University of South Florida. They've
come up with, basically, um, a little module called grouper Check. Yeah.
Their names are John Paul and Robert Ulric, which I
wanted to be Robert yuruck so bad. I kept thinking,
(35:16):
wasn't that the guy's name, but I was mixing up
Skeet uld Rich with Robert. This is the second career. Yeah,
it might be the same person for all I know.
But apparently this little thing looks like an external hard
drive plugged into a laptop a module and it can
tests four samples at a time, even if they have
sauce on them already, and it takes uh, which means
(35:36):
that you're sitting at the table running a test, a
DNA test on your dinner. Yeah, that's what you do.
You go in the restaurant and slip it. That's what
this that That woman who led the Oceana study says
that she there was a great Atlantic article. She seens
that sneak in. She goes into restaurants with little zip
blocks and you know, just puts a little bits of
ficient there. But the people who are with like, you
(36:00):
don't have to put in your mouth first, spit it
out and just put it in the bag directly. So
the grouper check machine UM works in forty five minutes,
which is the only thing it checks for is whether
it's a grouper. It goes ding it's grouper, and then
you go, oh, no, my grouper is cold. Yeah, exactly,
fish stew. That's your answer there, UM. But they are
(36:24):
working on many other types of checkers for other types
of fish. UM. The big problem with DNA sequencing is
it takes at least twelve hours two uh to do it,
you know, through DNA. So it's just not happening. No
one's DNA sequencing for twelve hours on all these ships
(36:45):
all over the world. Like fish fraud. I don't I
don't see how they can fix it. Get it down
to forty five minutes, get them in the hands of
inspectors and more inspectors. We're gonna bust you, buddy. Yeah,
in a Canadian fraudulent fish guy. Is that the idea
is that fear will be stricken into the hearts of
(37:06):
these fisher people. I think so, and that they will say,
you know them fisher people scared really easy. Yeah, that's true.
I've seen jaws right, they buckle at the first sign
of trouble. That's anything else. No, I'm good man, that
was fish fraud. Yeah, and shout out to that great
article in The Atlantic appropriately. Yeah, and check out the
(37:28):
bait and switch I think. Yeah, that's very clever title. Yeah,
check out that Oceana map to um and go to
go to your city and they will have some compiled
studies from all over the world. And you can avoid
those restaurants if you want, right, or support it if
you want. You're like, I love fish fraud. That's it.
(37:50):
If you want to know more about fish fraud, type
those words in the search part how stuff works dot com.
I said fraud. It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this hunting response. Remember we talked about hunting and
what was it? Polar bears and we don't get it.
But I certainly knew that there would be some good
(38:11):
arguments from some of the back to nature, folks, back
to nature featuring guns. Hey guys. Grew up in suburbia
and moved to the big city for college and finally
had the opportunity to move out to the sticks again
when my wife finished grad school and took a job.
We were committed to getting back to nature living more simply,
so we raised pigs and chickens for meat and eggs
(38:32):
in every autumni hunt for deer and elk. Going on
my fourth year here and this is in Montana, by
the way, Uh, the meat I hunt is organic and
free range. It lived one to three years as a
wild animal rather than in a cramped pin with a
dung matted floor. I was eliminated by a predator, albeit
with the help of a rifle. But after pulling a trigger,
(38:54):
it will stop breathing within two minutes. Uh. This is
an extremely quick death for a prey animal that may
otherwise be bled to death or jumped by a pack
of coyotes. The winter will kill off many of these
animals anyway via the cold, starvation, disease or infection, and
the hunting license that allows me to take an animal
indicates a gender and species, so the fish and game
(39:15):
can manage herd numbers. Fawns and pregnant animals are never taken,
most often young males are as they will have the
least impact on her population. Uh. It is a difficult
thing to do to pull the trigger to get the
shakes every time. Still, but I'm satisfied that my family
will have a healthy and natural meat for dinner for
the winter, and grateful to the animal that provided it.
(39:36):
I suppose I could just go down to my local
mega mart and by the sterile white package from behind
the glass. That just doesn't feel right to me anymore.
That is from Jason for Montana, And those are very
good points Jason. Although you could argue that he could
just wait until winter comes and go collect the dead
bodies of the the deer and elk. I don't know
(39:58):
that it works that way. I mean, they gotta fall
over somewhere right then everybody wins. Blame it on mother nature.
You just happened to be there when they fell over.
Thanks a lot, Jason, Um and everybody who wrote in
to talk to us about hunting. Um. You can get
in touch with us, try to persuade us to see
things your way by tweeting to us at s Y
(40:21):
s K podcast, or you can hang out with me
at josh um Clark. You can hang out with Chuck
on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or Facebook dot
com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us
both the email The Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
(40:43):
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff Works dot com
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(00:23):
it professional, make it beautiful. Welcome to you Stuff you
should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. Jerry's to my right, different things rolling, feeling easy.
(00:46):
So this is stuff you should know. Is that really Jerry?
Is it just Jerry the tooth pitch? Perhaps we've been
fooled this entire time. Yeah, I mean we'd have to
do a DNA test. Yeah, Jerry, I just made air quotes. Everybody.
Can we swab your mouth? I don't think we need to.
(01:08):
Her spittle is all over this room. She spits on
our microphones when we leave every day. I'm sure she does.
I'm I'm I've never been more convinced of anything. Some
days more than others. Uh, well that was just a
little um play acting what I was all in. Jerry's
(01:30):
a real human, She's not a toothfish. Oh yeah, but
you know it is a toothfish. Yeah, Chilean sea baths.
That's right, dude, We've just said that before. I feel
like it was in our in the TV show, so
like eight people at least heard it there. Let's see
my wife your wife. Uh yeah, we for sure mentioned
(01:53):
it on the TV show, and I feel like we've
mentioned it before. Everyone knows by now, right, because that's
one of those facts that people love to drop at
a dinner party, like, you know, what you're eating filth. Yeah,
it's delicious. Toothfish is what it is, right, you know. Yeah.
But I mean if you like, if a fish is
called a Patagonian toothfish, but it tastes delicious, then yeah,
(02:17):
there's really nothing wrong with just changing the name. Correct.
The problem comes when people get ripped off for paying
more money for something they think it is and it's not.
That is actually a surprisingly enormous problem. It turns out
it's called fish fraud or seafood fraud, and there's some
(02:37):
sheriff's on the case they're called Oceana. Yeah, they did it.
They're a great organization, by the way, they're fantastic. They
did this big study led by a woman named Kimberly
Warner in two thousand twelve because they knew everyone knew.
This was no surprise that fish are purposefully mislabeled a
(02:59):
lot of time by well, it kind of depends. I mean,
it could be the fisher person, could be the the
company they worked for. It could be the people that
they sell to at the docks. The wholesalers could be distributors,
could be the restaurant tour or the grocer you're buying
from who goes in the back and like stifles a
(03:22):
chuckle because you just paid seven times what that fish
is actually worth. I'm sure because you thought it was
something else. It does happen, and so, like you said,
everybody knows that this happened. But the Oceanic study was
it revealed just how widespread it was. Yeah, they reported
that thirty three of the fish it tested in restaurants
(03:45):
and markets were not the fish that the fish said
they were. It gets worse. That's everything they tested that
was the average, right, So fully a third of all
the samples, and they took like forty seven samples six
hundred and many five restaurants in twenty one states across
the US. They found that in sushi restaurants in particular,
(04:10):
of the food samples were mislabeled. And if so, you say, well,
seventy of sushi restaurants do that, no of samples of
the sushi restaurants sold mislabeled fish. Yeah, like this isn't mackerel,
it's ground beef. And a hundred percent d percent of
(04:30):
the hammachi, the yellowtail was mislabeled. None of it was
actual yellowtail. Yeah. And and just at the sushi restaurants
of Hamachi. Yeah, there's a new place in Atlanta that
I went to recently called Brush that I already mentioned this.
It's the best sushi I've ever had, probably really and
(04:53):
it's the most expensive shi I've ever had. It's called Brush. Yeah,
where is it? It's Indicator and it's Um. I mean
it's really pricey. Have you been to Umi? No, stuff,
haven't been there, but like i'd be interested in compared
to a single piece piece of sushi, is like twelve
bucks shushi for twelve sushi sandwich, you know, yeah, that's
(05:14):
pretty expensive sushi. Yeah, I mean we dropped for a
regular meal, way too much money. But do you do
when you walked out of there? This is the key.
When you walked out of there, did you feel like
you've gotten your money's worth? Or were you slightly irritated? No?
It was It was the most delicious sushi I've ever had. Cool.
But here's the deal. They just give you. I thought
(05:36):
we talked about this. Maybe not. Um, you're confusing me
with you know how their podcast. I love to over
soy my sushi. That's how I like it. But they
don't let you do that. They don't give you soy
sauce at all. And then if you ask for it,
that good. You know my views on untaste, Yeah, do
(05:56):
it the way I say it. But if you request it,
they of you a little spray bottle. Yeah, well they're
serious about this tiny little spray bottle that you can
spray on your things. So did you like get a
cramp spraying soy sauce on your sushi? Now? I unscrewed it,
and that's awesome. If I'm gonna pay two meal, sure
you should be able to eat it. How you want
(06:16):
to agree exactly. That's like, I don't know, come to
a hot dog place, You're like, you really don't think
you should put catchup on there, So we're not going
to have that for you, you know, or they give
you a spray bottle cap, it won't work, that's right. Okay,
Well there's some good free buzz marketing for brush. Frankly,
I think you owe us both the gift card. Yeah,
(06:37):
but my point was you would think, I mean, there
was sabby was real. You would think that they that
everything was as advertised when you go to a place
at night. The problem is man like they they may
believe that, and the people that they bought it from
me believe it. But I was reading the Sociana study
and they said that I think even more than of
(06:59):
the seafood imported in the US, and that's most of
the seafoo in the US we impored, almost all of
it is processed at sea. And I was like, what
does that mean? And I went and searched like fish
processing at sea and I found this little twelve minute
like Yankee documentary about I think like Norwegian or some
(07:19):
sort of Scandinavian fisher trawler where they start with the
catch had this huge net of I'm not quite sure
what kind of fish it was, but it was generally
the same fish that they Um, what you didn't know
what kind of fishing right right, Well, yeah, I'm getting
to that. Then they dump them into like the fish
sorting things, right, and then um they start processing. They
(07:43):
have a whole processing plant in the on the boat
and so by the time these guys get to shore,
these things are already frozen salid in blocks, packaged in boxes.
So the people who are buying it have to be like, okay,
it says on the box this, I'm gonna trust you
and give me, you know, half a million or a
(08:04):
million pounds of that stuff because I'm a distributor. And
if they're not truthful, the fisher people aren't truth truthful,
then the whole supply line is infected and it's very
tough to verify it is. Oceania has a map, by
the way, if you go to their website and just
google fish fraud, Oceania will go right there and they
have a handy map where you can click on It's
(08:26):
all over the world. It's not a US problem, um,
and you can click on like Atlanta, Georgia. If that's
where you live. And UM, what it will do is
linked to UH. If they don't have a study from
the restaurants, they will link to other source studies that
they've compiled. And there was one that was a link
to UH. A j c our newspaper or had an
(08:46):
article about local restaurants. You know, when they do that,
the expose a thing. We visited eight local restaurants and
they called them out by name. And of course these
people are like, well, I didn't know, right, So and
I think a lot of times they probably don't know.
I would guess probably most of the time they don't know. Yeah,
you know. I mean if you're if you're dealing directly
with the end consumer, you're you're probably going to be
(09:09):
less likely to engage in fraud, you know. Um. And
if this sounds like a not big deal, it's a
billion dollar fraud and dollars annually in fraud in America alone, Yeah,
just the United States, that's right. So yeah. And the
reason why it's billion dollars worth of frauds because we
(09:30):
spend a lot of money on seafood. Um it's good
for you, right, And the number one driver of UM
seafood fraud is misrepresenting something like as an expensive fish
in replacing it with the fish that's much less expensive.
That's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. The
FDA does have laws, UM, but the problem is one
(09:55):
of the problem UH problems is less than one percent
of all the fish that are in ordered, less than
one percent is inspected. So one percent of all the
fish and seafood eaten in the United States is inspective
for fraud. Yeah, and the and the ten percent. I mean,
one of the tips that will give you later I'll
(10:16):
go ahead and say now is if you buy local
fish or fish from the United States, you're far less
likely to be UH frauded defrauded. Yeah, defrauded, which doesn't
make any sense. It's like inflammable. Yeah. But um, apparently
the US internally does a pretty good job keeping it
above board, but like you said, comes from elsewhere. So
(10:39):
that's the issue and one of the reasons why it's
um that the f D a UM or the United
States I should say, the federal government has so much
trouble inspecting imported fish because there's apparently like ninety agents
tasked with inspecting all of the fish that's imported into
the United States. Yeah, inty people. Yeah, and that's the
(11:02):
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in o a A. Noah
is who's doing this. Um, And they're doing the best
they can. But ninety people. It's like I didn't get
numbers on how much of our imported fishes, but I
mean it's got to be like foounds maybe maybe even
up to a thousand, so there's no way they can
(11:24):
test all these fish. Um. What's funny in the Sociana
UM study, and I should say this is from two twelve.
I think this made the news several years ago and
we're bringing it back. Um, they're they're the worst offenders
as far as seafood frog go. We're Thailand and Vietnam.
But Canada was mentioned in there. What Yeah, oh Canada.
(11:49):
I know that's what I say to Yeah, they apparently
don't have nearly as stringent aquaculture laws as we do
in the US. I know that's what I said too.
There are such nice people, though I would have thought
would be the opposite, you know, Yeah, maybe that's what
it is. Maybe they're like, we don't need laws. Of course,
we're not going to defraud. You were Canadians and maybe
(12:09):
it's just a mistake. They're like looks like a god
to me, a you know, like they're not intentionally defrauding people,
because Canadians don't do that. Uh. All right, well let's
take a break and we're gonna talk about, um kind
of how this is done right after this. All right,
(12:50):
So I promised to tell you how this is done. Um.
One of the big ways and reasons this can happen
is that a lot of the time him these fake fish,
they're real fish, fraudulent fish, unless it's that fake crab stuff, right,
which is still fish. Oh yeah it is, isn't it.
It's like white fish in it. Um, it's like string
(13:13):
cheese crab. It's still delicious. I love it. Do you
like it? I'm not big on it, yeah, I mean,
of course I always prefer the real thing. I had
too much when I was a kid. I think. Yeah,
I do a pretty good uh kind of red nicky
crab dip with it. Oh yeah, it's just delicious, just
like mayonnaise and what's the shirt and stuff? It is good. Uh.
I will say this is like as red nicky as
(13:34):
it is when I have it at places like parties,
People like it's like crack. Even high society types, Yep,
they can't get enough of it. They're like, what's in this?
And I go Duke's mayonnaise and fake crab what? Alright?
So what was pop out they do? Oh? Yeah. The
reason why this happens is a lot of these fraudulent
(13:55):
fish are they come to you as filet's. They don't
have the head in the tail and the skin and
all those things, and you can't or maybe the skin,
but people don't know this. Really. This goes to that
um processing, right, So, like these guys just dumped a
net full of fish down these shoots, and the first
thing they did was the things went um perpendicular down
(14:19):
a conveyor belt, right, So rather than facing the direction
that the conveyor conveyor belt was going, they were perpendicular
in that direction. And it just so happened that along
that conveyor belt was a big circular saw that was
exactly where their head was placed. So it just cuts
their heads right off, right, You can identify that fish
very easily. Then it goes into the body splitter and gutter,
(14:40):
then the fil ayer and seriously, I was watching this,
I'm like, that is that the same kind of fish,
and yet they were ending up in the same like
batch of fish that was being sold in package together.
So I was looking around to see, like, who's keeping
up with this? And again at sea, nobody's keeping up
(15:01):
with it. Of course not right. So like in the
United States and in other countries, there are people who, um,
who are overseeing this stuff, and sorting fish is a
it's a big deal, but it's also a pain, right,
because if you get what's called bycatch in your in
your in your catch, yeah, in your nets, like you
(15:22):
don't if you're if you're shopping for tuna, you don't
want dolphin, you know, if you're fishing for tuna and
you and you hauling a big net, like you're gonna
have all kinds of stuff in there. Yeah. And apparently
we read this little Mother Jones article two. Did you
read that? So? Um, Apparently this is a fairly recent
phenomenon by catch, right, because in like the sixties or seventies,
(15:45):
they started using much longer line, so they were catching
much deeper fish, and they were also by catching fish
that they didn't normally catch before, including the Patagonian toothfish.
So these guys are bringing up so much bycatch, and
it's such a pain to just sort this stuff and
then basically throw it away. They're like, we should rename
(16:07):
this thing and like create a market for it. So
they did. So they renamed Patagonian toothfish Chilean sea bass,
and all of a sudden, there's a big market for it.
The irony is now they're over fishing Chilean sea baths
Patagonian toothfish. They need to change the name back again.
(16:29):
Uh all right, well, here's here's a list, and we're
gonna get to that other. I know, if you tease
someone with something like exlex fish, it's always good to
come back to that. But we will list out a
few of the things that are most often substituted. Um
Pacific cod or Alaskan cod. Um. A lot of times
(16:50):
you're gonna be getting Asian catfish, or maybe a thread
fan slickhead, or maybe even silapia thread finn slickheads or
a diamond dozen. Uh, Pacific alibu, you might get Atlantic alibu,
Atlantic cod, you might get Pacific cod. Yeah. Groupers a
big one. Yeah. Groupers apparently the most swapped out fish,
(17:12):
the most fraudulent fish of all I think because the
markup is so great. The markup is great, but also
because the FDA is doing some weird stuff. So the
FDA determines what's food in America, and there's like species
of fish that qualify as food that marketable food. Right, grouper.
(17:32):
There's something like sixties six species and twelve different geni
um of fish that can be sold as just grouper
in America. So not only is it expensive, but it's
also um. There's a lot of confusion, so most most
restaurateurs won't be like, well, that's that's not grouper, that's
(17:53):
um um Asian catfish. Yeah. They'd be like, well that's
the type of grouper, Okay, but it's not in that case. Yeah,
but yeah, you're right, it's it's it's there are that
many kinds of one fish. It's probably hard to regulate,
harder to regulate, and I think the market they said
it's like four times if you are if you're selling
Asian catfish, it's gonna be a four times markup for grouper. Right,
(18:17):
So if you're impoverished fisher person, you'll say, yeah, maybe
this ship man grouper, red snapper, Right, you want to
see if you see like a box with grouper and
a question markt be wary of that one red snapper.
Be aware you might be eating crimson snapper instead. That's
(18:40):
a big, big problem. Or tilapia. Yeah, and then salmon,
of course there there's a wide range of salmon and
a wide range of prices according to what kind of
salmon it is. And it's all farmed Atlantic salmon, well
it could be for apparently that's ah, that's what they
switch all of them out with. Like, if you think
(19:01):
you're getting a Copper River salmon, it's probably Copper River
salmon because that's here in the US. Sure, But if
you think, oh, look at that that ski over there,
it's beautiful, don't don't see his face, but it's probably
Atlantic salmon. Yeah. And at first I was like, I
(19:22):
don't understand how they could swap out salmon because it's
so just distinctive. But now I get it, because you
think it's like a wild caught Alaskan salmon, and it's
it was, you know, farmed in some guy's backyard in Louisiana,
you know. And I was looking to see what the
difference is between wild caught and farmed fish Apparently for
(19:44):
every pro on one side, there's a con as well,
And if you kind of go down the list, they
pretty much even out one another. Um. A lot of
the old unsustainable practices like get this, so to feed fish,
they will go out and catch smaller fish and then
feed the smaller fish to the bigger fish, which is
(20:07):
stupid because you're going and getting all of the babies
from fish nurseries that and they won't grow up any longer.
They figured out that you can feed them a combination
of worms and algae and that has basically the same
amount of nutrients, but it's what more too expensive or
not as easy or something, I don't know, I don't know.
(20:28):
But similarly, right um, they're like, well, you know, there's
a lot of runoff and farms and stuff that that
can pollute the fishery. Um, but the same thing can
be true for like actual like wild coots fish as well.
So there's like this weird give and take, and they
seem to totally equal out. Yeah, So as far as
the most mislabeled in the oceanic study, at least of
(20:53):
snapper samples that they found were mislabeled, and that was
the number one mislabeled fish. In their study that year,
tuna was number two. It's fifty nine. That's that's like
close to the tuna almost there. Yeah, and white tuna
is is a big reason why. Um, we've all probably
had albacore delicious albacore. Um. And white tuna is not
(21:17):
even a fish. So if you go to anywhere but
a sushi place, it says white tuna. UM, say like,
well that's not a fish. What is this would be like,
it's white tuna. Stop asking questions. Yeah, they'll take your
soy sauce away, give you mustard instead of a sabi
in a bottle. Um. But yeah, it's not even a
(21:38):
real fish. So um uh esclar is the fish that
we've been teasing this whole time, the ex lax fish. Yes,
and I love this fish. I do too. I didn't
realize it was that I've eaten it his butterfish many
a time. Yeah. What are the other names for it? Butterfish, um,
(21:58):
white tuna, Hawaiian wallo. Yeah, that's it. That's very misleading.
Rudder fish. Rudder fish sounds inedible itself. You know, sure,
I wouldn't need a rudder fish. I'd be like get
this off the menu. I think Escolar sounds like very fancy. Yeah,
like it makes your pinky go up when you say it,
you know, yeah, like Escalar, Yeah, because it sounds like Escobar.
(22:20):
And he was the best drug king pin of all time. Sure, yeah,
he was the fancy drug king But I guess Escalar.
People know it's a dirty little secret, which is that
there is an oil, uh this wax esther that makes
it taste delicious and it's not digestible by us. So
if you eat more like in little tiny sushi portions,
(22:43):
it's it's okay, but if you get enough of it,
you're gonna have the poopy pants by enough of it,
like a filet can do it supply? Probably? Yeah, Like
anal seepage apparently is the result of eating this stuff. Yeah,
say I didn't he didn't know. I did. People need
(23:04):
to be informed. Uh Yeah. So what happened was, um
people started blue fin tuna, as everyone knows, is very
expensive now because there's not as much of it. So
vy blue fin tuna was about fourteen cents a pound
on the wholesale market, and UM it varies now. In
two thousand and fifteen it was eight to twelve bucks
(23:26):
a pound, and in two thousand and fourteen it was
actually higher, it was ten to fifteen dollars a pound.
That's why you see these crazy reports like a fisherman
catches a tuna worth like ten thousand dollars or more,
you know, because it's like hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
Uh if you get a big one. And um, so,
like you said, they started going deeper and that's when
(23:48):
they started getting this bycatch. And apparently esclar dwell on
the bottom because they're poopy fish. They're called a snake mackerel.
That's a good name. I need a snake mackerel. Would
you sure that made you poop your pants? That gave
you anal seepage? Well, it doesn't say that on the menu,
(24:08):
although since I mentioned that, Uh. In two thousand four
the state of Washington, Uh, they issued a bulletin on it,
and they have I think some restaurants at least in
the European Union like say on the packaging it can
cause poopy pants. Right, there's a picture of a guy
holding the seat of his pants in alarm with the
(24:31):
universal symbol snake mackerel coming out of his butt, smoking
a cigar. Oh boy, it is outright banded in Japan
and Italy, so I love it. In Japan, you know,
they're they're like, no, don't mess with our sushi. But
people stand by it. There's um, I mean chef Eric Prepair,
they mentioned this article like world renowned chef. He's he
(24:54):
loves his stuff. Well, yeah, it cleans him out. But
I guess you just don't serve it like too much.
He's like, you go spend a weekend in a chili
cook off, pounds of escal are on Sunday night and
escalar shake growth. You have had it before, right, Yeah,
butterfish is the perfect name. It's really delicious. It is amazing. Yeah,
(25:16):
but yeah, apparently gets you. And for the part of
the U s f D a um, they said that
they request manufacturers informed buyers about the purgative effect toothless toothfishless. Yeah,
should we take a break. Let's take a break, and
then we'll come back and talk about why this actually
(25:37):
matters and uh, how to combat this? So chuck, we
(26:06):
we mentioned like the big thing billion dollars worth of
losses or I guess rip offs in the United States
alone every year, right, So that's I mean that's the
basis of why people fight fish fraud. Somebody's getting ripped off,
whether it's you, whether it's the restaurant tour you're buying from,
whether it's just the distributor, whether it's all of you combined,
(26:29):
you're getting ripped off and that's not cool. Well, yeah,
because like we said, if if you like the taste
of the fish, just call it that fish, the market
price appropriately and maybe that price will go up naturally. Well,
that's what happened I think with the Chilean sea bass. Yeah,
I mean they renamed it, but it was it wasn't
fraud necessarily. No demand drove the price up, you know, No, No,
(26:51):
that wasn't That was just marketing. Yeah, but the demand
was driven by the barn Asian marketing practics, you know. No, agreed,
they weren't committing fraud, correct, they were just committing pr
you know, good one. So being ripped off is a
big one. There's also health concerns too. In addition to
(27:15):
anal seepage, there are plenty of other things that can
happen to you if you eat fish that is different
from the fish that you're thinking you're eating. All kinds
of seepage. All right, I see pitch gum seepage. I know.
But people are allergic to certain kinds of fish. Um,
so you might not know that you're eating something that's
horrible to you'd be like, this is wah, who I
(27:38):
thought it was telapia? Good one. Huh. Telappi is one
of those. It's very much under fire for the farm
raised practices, oh, because it's not very well raised. Yeah.
I don't know exactly the deal, but I know that
telappi is a very controversial fish to buy right now
here in the US or out out of I think
(27:58):
in the US, because everything I saw said like, fisheries
used to be farm raised. Fisheries used to be um
nasty in the US, but the Americans have really cleaned
up our act lately. Yeah, I'll have to look it up.
They there are plenty of articles called like the problem
with telapia and stuff like that. And they don't call
it the rat of the sea for nothing, do they?
(28:22):
You just made it up? So uh. One of the
other big problems is that fish are always being monitored
for being over fished, and so if you don't know
what's being sold and eaten, you can't get accurate numbers
on what you're trying to protect. You might be eating
an endangered fish. You might even be one of those
(28:42):
people that carries a little card AOU in your wallet
that says, you know, eat these responsible fish or I
guess they're not responsible fish. Maybe they are responsibly my
home that they provide for. Uh. But yeah, you might
be eating something. You might be eating something that is
seriously endangered and you don't even know. Yeah, And this
(29:04):
article I think makes a pretty good point that, Um,
there's a like, if you're pushing to save a fish
species from being fish to extinction, you usually need public
sentiment behind you in those in those cases right to
be effective. Um, but if the public is out there
like dude, I'm seeing snapper everywhere. Everybody's got snapper. It's
(29:24):
not endangered, you hippie, go home, then your your your
public relations thing is going to fail. Yeah. So that's
another kind of indirect problem of easily overlooked problem, the
perception that fish are healthier. Fish stocks are healthier than
they actually are. Apparently the blue fin tuna stocks are
(29:45):
going up a bit, which is good news. Yeah, that
was that good thing about the bycatch like starting to
market bycatch that it like took the pressure off of
the original target fish that they were going after. So
what can you do? They suggest buying whole fish. If
you're not creeped out by that, um, you don't mind
(30:06):
looking those little fellas in the eyeballs, then dead eyes
by the whole fish, because it's much easier to tell
what kind of fishes when it has a face. The
thing is that's you have to know what a fish
looks like. Then yeah, or have a computer hookup an
internet connection. Are sure you know? But I mean, are
you gonna take the fish home, look it up and
(30:28):
then take it back and be like, this doesn't match
the picture. No, you take out your phone in the store,
google red snapper and if you think that guy doesn't
look like a red snapper, or you know what, I
bet there's an app or there should be an app
called fish watch where you can take a picture of
the fish in the store and then really annoy the
(30:52):
fishmonger at your local market, challenging them with your app.
When you catch them in the active fraud, you go
fish watch, spin and run off. The other thing they
say you can do is, uh, if you go to
a restaurant and you want to pretend like you're in
a Portlandia Sketch asks them about where the fish was
(31:13):
caught or raised, how it was raised, how it was caught,
what kind of nets were used, what area the ocean.
What's the name of the man who cut its head off? Yeah,
they say that's a legitimate thing you can do. Do
you remember that song fish heads, fish heads, fish heads? Yeah? Heads?
Which what was that? Do you too? It was like
(31:33):
this duo and I can't remember their names, but one
of the duo, one half of the duo was Little
Will Robinson from um uh uh what's the name of
that space? Yeah? I think I went down a internet
rabbit hole on that song one time. It's a great song,
but it wasn't it just like it's sort of in
(31:54):
the new wave era. It's like late seventies, early eighties.
It was um with a residence then Yeah, yeah, than
anything than new wave? You know. Interesting? Did you ever
see that episode of Chips where they basically spend the
whole episode trying to explain the difference between punk rockers
(32:14):
who are criminals and new waivers who are just there
to have fun. Good Yeah, maybe you know the actor
William forsythe sure. He plays a punk with like a
green mohawk, who like, I think he's taken pot shots
of people on the highway, like an embankment with his rifle. Yeah,
because you know punks are snipers in the weight. Yeah, yeah,
(32:35):
it's pretty funny. And then punches trying to date this
new wave girl who's explaining to him the difference. It's
a good, good episode. As as usual with Chips, there
was some angle with punch in the lady. Yeah, hey,
I think you're kind of freaky, but let's state I
told you I worked with him one time, right, and
he kept arresting people. Well he would that would. I
(32:57):
asked him if he would arrest me for a photo
and he was like, yeah, sure, put me up against
the car, Like why are your handcuffs fuzzy? He very
much enjoyed being punched though. He was into it, Like
all the ladies came out in the neighborhood still and
they're like Erica Strata. He's like that's right, right, and
his hair quivered. He's like, do we have any punk
(33:18):
or new Waivers in the neighborhood. You gotta see that
up man, it's good. That was a great show. Maybe
the best theme song of all time too, that's pretty good.
Didn't we try to model our own TV show theme
song after that? But then didn't? Wasn't that the original idea?
It was like to make it like Chips. Oh no,
it was a different show. What was it? It was
(33:43):
like it was supposed to be like a takeoff and
one of the one of the great legendary TV shows openings.
I don't remember what it was, but we did do
the liver and up and down thing, but I don't
remember what it was. Maybe Chad can tell us. We
failed on so many levels there, it's pretty remarkable. Um,
(34:06):
Chad's the director of the show, by the way, case
you don't know Chad. Uh So. There was a task
force that President Obama put together in December of last
year that UM and I always wonder about these when
they say things like I'm going to call for better
international cooperation and collaboration, right, Like, I know there are
(34:29):
more details to that that probably make it seem like
it has teeth, But when you hear that, it kind
of feels like, is that really going to do anything?
Like when Rubber meets the road and these people are
out there fishing in the deep ocean. Like always said,
we needed to cooperate and collaborate, So let's do it,
you know, like enforcement is what we need. Well, there's
(34:53):
these guys who are trying to get the enforcement end
down chuck down at the University of South Florida. They've
come up with, basically, um, a little module called grouper Check. Yeah.
Their names are John Paul and Robert Ulric, which I
wanted to be Robert yuruck so bad. I kept thinking,
(35:16):
wasn't that the guy's name, but I was mixing up
Skeet uld Rich with Robert. This is the second career. Yeah,
it might be the same person for all I know.
But apparently this little thing looks like an external hard
drive plugged into a laptop a module and it can
tests four samples at a time, even if they have
sauce on them already, and it takes uh, which means
(35:36):
that you're sitting at the table running a test, a
DNA test on your dinner. Yeah, that's what you do.
You go in the restaurant and slip it. That's what
this that That woman who led the Oceana study says
that she there was a great Atlantic article. She seens
that sneak in. She goes into restaurants with little zip
blocks and you know, just puts a little bits of
ficient there. But the people who are with like, you
(36:00):
don't have to put in your mouth first, spit it
out and just put it in the bag directly. So
the grouper check machine UM works in forty five minutes,
which is the only thing it checks for is whether
it's a grouper. It goes ding it's grouper, and then
you go, oh, no, my grouper is cold. Yeah, exactly,
fish stew. That's your answer there, UM. But they are
(36:24):
working on many other types of checkers for other types
of fish. UM. The big problem with DNA sequencing is
it takes at least twelve hours two uh to do it,
you know, through DNA. So it's just not happening. No
one's DNA sequencing for twelve hours on all these ships
(36:45):
all over the world. Like fish fraud. I don't I
don't see how they can fix it. Get it down
to forty five minutes, get them in the hands of
inspectors and more inspectors. We're gonna bust you, buddy. Yeah,
in a Canadian fraudulent fish guy. Is that the idea
is that fear will be stricken into the hearts of
(37:06):
these fisher people. I think so, and that they will say,
you know them fisher people scared really easy. Yeah, that's true.
I've seen jaws right, they buckle at the first sign
of trouble. That's anything else. No, I'm good man, that
was fish fraud. Yeah, and shout out to that great
article in The Atlantic appropriately. Yeah, and check out the
(37:28):
bait and switch I think. Yeah, that's very clever title. Yeah,
check out that Oceana map to um and go to
go to your city and they will have some compiled
studies from all over the world. And you can avoid
those restaurants if you want, right, or support it if
you want. You're like, I love fish fraud. That's it.
(37:50):
If you want to know more about fish fraud, type
those words in the search part how stuff works dot com.
I said fraud. It's time for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this hunting response. Remember we talked about hunting and
what was it? Polar bears and we don't get it.
But I certainly knew that there would be some good
(38:11):
arguments from some of the back to nature, folks, back
to nature featuring guns. Hey guys. Grew up in suburbia
and moved to the big city for college and finally
had the opportunity to move out to the sticks again
when my wife finished grad school and took a job.
We were committed to getting back to nature living more simply,
so we raised pigs and chickens for meat and eggs
(38:32):
in every autumni hunt for deer and elk. Going on
my fourth year here and this is in Montana, by
the way, Uh, the meat I hunt is organic and
free range. It lived one to three years as a
wild animal rather than in a cramped pin with a
dung matted floor. I was eliminated by a predator, albeit
with the help of a rifle. But after pulling a trigger,
(38:54):
it will stop breathing within two minutes. Uh. This is
an extremely quick death for a prey animal that may
otherwise be bled to death or jumped by a pack
of coyotes. The winter will kill off many of these
animals anyway via the cold, starvation, disease or infection, and
the hunting license that allows me to take an animal
indicates a gender and species, so the fish and game
(39:15):
can manage herd numbers. Fawns and pregnant animals are never taken,
most often young males are as they will have the
least impact on her population. Uh. It is a difficult
thing to do to pull the trigger to get the
shakes every time. Still, but I'm satisfied that my family
will have a healthy and natural meat for dinner for
the winter, and grateful to the animal that provided it.
(39:36):
I suppose I could just go down to my local
mega mart and by the sterile white package from behind
the glass. That just doesn't feel right to me anymore.
That is from Jason for Montana, And those are very
good points Jason. Although you could argue that he could
just wait until winter comes and go collect the dead
bodies of the the deer and elk. I don't know
(39:58):
that it works that way. I mean, they gotta fall
over somewhere right then everybody wins. Blame it on mother nature.
You just happened to be there when they fell over.
Thanks a lot, Jason, Um and everybody who wrote in
to talk to us about hunting. Um. You can get
in touch with us, try to persuade us to see
things your way by tweeting to us at s Y
(40:21):
s K podcast, or you can hang out with me
at josh um Clark. You can hang out with Chuck
on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or Facebook dot
com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us
both the email The Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For
(40:43):
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff Works dot com
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Josh Clark
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