Bass in supermarkets and Restaurants

[yakker]

Where do these come from? I've seen ones presented on a plate that are pretty small (barely 40cm). Are these farmed, or caught abroad, or what?

[bhoy32]

most of them are farmed and imported, from greece i think

[Donnyboy1]

Greece, Turkey and Spain are the biggest exporters to Ireland I think...

Legal size limits do not apply to farmed fish, so they are very VERY small, not yet at spawning age in most cases.

Don't buy fish from Supermarkets, FYI, very little is from Ireland. Certainly don't buy prawns....

[LennyH]

Work in a butchers with a fish bed and the sea bass is farmed and from Turkey so your spot on Donnyboy.

[saving private brian]

ya lots of them are spanish and greek bass believe it or not

[Bass 3rd]

Greece, Turkey and Spain are the biggest exporters to Ireland I think...

Legal size limits do not apply to farmed fish, so they are very VERY small, not yet at spawning age in most cases.

Don't buy fish from Supermarkets, FYI, very little is from Ireland. Certainly don't buy prawns....

Is there something I should know about prawns ..?? .. my wife buys them all the time.

[onur]

Greece, Turkey and Spain are the biggest exporters to Ireland I think...

Legal size limits do not apply to farmed fish, so they are very VERY small, not yet at spawning age in most cases.

Don't buy fish from Supermarkets, FYI, very little is from Ireland. Certainly don't buy prawns....

Is there something I should know about prawns ..?? .. my wife buys them all the time.

:

Prawns 4 dinner...
They are expensive, tell your wife buy cheaper option for dinner,therefore you can save couple of yoyos and start to saving for your fishing boat

[Donnyboy1]

Greece, Turkey and Spain are the biggest exporters to Ireland I think...

Legal size limits do not apply to farmed fish, so they are very VERY small, not yet at spawning age in most cases.

Don't buy fish from Supermarkets, FYI, very little is from Ireland. Certainly don't buy prawns....

Is there something I should know about prawns ..?? .. my wife buys them all the time.

Sorry man, I just noticed this now!!
look here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... unter.html

specifically

Take prawns — a big seller in our supermarkets. Fifty thousand tons each year pour into the EU. Some of these are farmed in the prawn pools of Bangladesh, before beginning their long journey to a British dinner plate.

But what is the process by which they are farmed and produced? To find out, we travelled to ­Bangladesh to film undercover at the prawn pools. What we found was truly appalling.

Latrines filled with human waste were sited over the sea water canals, whose contents are swept into the prawn pools with every tide. Stray dogs chewed prawn fragments in the trading market.

One farmer we spoke to routinely doused his pool with a pesticide known as Thiodan, to keep disease down among his prawn stocks.

But this pesticide contains Endosulfan, a substance which is banned in more than 50 countries worldwide, including in the EU. Ingestion in large quantities is linked to numerous human health risks, including paralysis and birth defects.
Industrial phosphates are used - in safe amounts we are told - in a wide variety of fish and ­shellfish products coming into the UK

He told us: ‘Due to virus in the past ten years, the fish die. For this reason I have to use medicine. Thiodan for instance — eight to ten ­bottles — and I spread it in equal portions, evenly over all areas.’

Nobody we spoke to appeared to be aware of any possible dangers from this chemical.

EU officials talk confidently about their regulation and inspection teams working across all the countries from which our seafood is imported. They give a reassuring view of an industry that is well-regulated in Bangladesh.

But the farmers we spoke to said they had never been inspected nor even seen any such inspectors. One said: ‘I can’t tell you the rules, but nobody comes here for inspection.’

Bangladeshi exporters themselves are fond of talking about ‘trace­ability’ — knowing exactly where the fish you eat has come from, how it was produced and so forth.

On the ground in ­Bangladesh, things are rather different. One middle-man in this chain — a trader who buys directly from the farmers and sells the prawns on to UK exporters, said: ‘The fish I buy are from different areas and not kept separate. All the fish are mixed together. They’re kept together and sold together.’

No wonder then, that if you go to official websites listing seizures of seafood products coming into the UK because food safety regulations have been broken or suspicions aroused, you will find Bangladesh as country of origin over and over again.

Prawns arriving from Bangladesh are subject to extra inspections and tests for banned chemicals. However, those chemicals do not include Endosulfan, which we actually found being used in Bangladesh.

All this is just another disturbing example of how the international trade really works. From ­production and storage through to the shelves in our supermarkets, when it comes to fish, what you think you’re ­buying might not be what you are buying at all.

* Dispatches: Fish Unwrapped airs at 7.05pm tonight as part of Channel 4’s Big Fish Fight season. Alex Thomson is a Channel 4 News presenter.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1MhRH0a9D

That was a great program.... scares the crap outta you when you look to purchase fish....