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