Eurocrats have been hoodwinked into eating cheap fish, an undercover investigation into Brussels restaurants has established.
EU officials are being ripped-off and their health put in danger by a “systemic” fraud in the Belgian dining scene that sees one in three fish dishes mislabelled.
An investigation by campaigners using undercover diners and DNA sample analysis found that even the restaurants of the European Commission and Parliament are, wittingly or unwittingly, passing off low-grade fillets as delicacies.
Investigators working with the University of Leuven sought to buy five kinds of fish – Atlantic cod, common sole, bluefin tuna, swordfish and ray – from restaurants surrounding EU offices and in Brussels’ tourist quarter.
In fact, they were served 36 kinds of fish – including four that could not be identified by laboratory analysis.
If the dullards who become bureaucrats cannot tell the difference then why should anyone else give a shit?
Except, of course, that because 10,000 dullards are being ripped off the 500 million people of Europe will be subjected to yet another layer of expensive and intrusive legislation. Hurrah etc. Because if one of the fuckers stubbed their toe they’d be waving around plans for a Common European Stair, wouldn’t they?
Fillets of sole? The lazy sods deserve to be ripped off. And FFS they needed DNA help in identifying tuna. Just ask a Filipino, bound to be some around. They could tell you just by looking at it whether it was tuna. Served in just about every meal where I am currently plying my trade.
And cod, sole and tuna are delicacies? The staple ingredients of a traditional fish and chip shop, and tuna mayo sarnies?
“…four that could not be identified by laboratory analysis.”
Are we sure they were really fish?
Rob:
“On Saturday morning around 5 a.m., a 222-kilogram bluefin tuna was sold at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market for an all-time high of 155.4 million yen, or 1.8 million dollars, at the annual new year auction, Japan’s national broadcaster NHK reported. That equals $8,000 per kilo of tuna, making the marbled, richly-flavoured tuna roughly eight times more expensive than silver.”
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/07/japan-worlds-most-expensive-fish-sold-for-1-8-million/
I spend a lot of time in the Philippines and don’t eat much tuna there. Mostly chicken or pork and if having fish then it’s usually tilapia. Are you in Manila? I have a place in Mandaluyong near Megamall where the family are staying at the moment…. dump of a city in my opinion, but get outside of there and it’s a beautiful country.
Surely Belgium has some basic consumer protection legislation that could be wielded in these cases?
Ah, no. Then they can’t claim to “be doing something about it”.
Dongguan John,
You going to put the family out in the street?
Hahaha… to be honest I’d rather live in a shack by the beach than a condo in Manila.
DJ, Thanks re Blue Fin, I should read more closely. I am in Davao currently, the Yellow Fin Tuna capital of the Philippines. Building a factory, so I am not doing much for the natural beauty of the country, but will be creating 1300 jobs, which I care more about. Manila was my first overseas posting 18 years ago, and it is so much better now than it was then. Still a dump though, but I do treat Makati as an R&R treat when I get tired of the ‘fun’ of the provinces.
Oh cool, Davao, I’ve been there a couple of times, once spent a few days climbing Mt Apo with some pinoy friends. Some good diving around there too I believe. The mayor is a bit of a mentalist right, might be standing for president too I think I heard? Heard some funny stories about him but the locals seem to love the guy.
Stubbed their tow? You mean toe I assume
The mayor, Duterte, cleaned up one of the most crime-infested cities in the Philippines. Given there isn’t a functioning judiciary here, he skipped that piece, and had plain-clothes police dispense justice at the point of a gun. After several hundred local villains ended up in the mortuary, everyone started following the rules. Statistically one of the safest cities in the world for violent crimes.
I was just looking at Mt Apo, the new facility is on the edge of the national park.
EU
storm troopers…Nomenklatura and done up like kippers how delicious is that? And hoisted on petards…..through the overt failure of the very rules they enforce down the throats of the rest of us…..anyone remember the UK meat scandal and super markets selling Romanian horse flesh……… as “locally sourced”…. ‘British/Irish’ beef – “cos, all the paperwork was in order mate!”I’m certain that this is some silly mistake, how could they?
Surely, all these fine restaurants purveying the finest foodstuffs for our greatly favoured and very overpaid – wonderful EU administrators……SURELY these epicurean establishments would have ensured that their pescatorial supplies were ethically sourced and line fished by hardy sons of toil those villager anglers – at that!
I mean, don’t these bureaucrats tell us what a fine thing is the CFP and all quotas and stuff is absolutely KOSHER…well actually Halal nowadays.
Blimey, all fish would have been properly accredited – individually named even! and all paper work would have been in order, isn’t that how things work in this enlightened and divine Utopia our dear leaders are fashioning for us all?
Ah God, the very thought of these stuffed shirt bureaucrats munching processed bits of fishy whatever stuff, for exquisitely nose bleed expensive prices, you’d have to have a heart of stone – not to laugh loud and very long.
“…including four that could not be identified by laboratory analysis.”
Sounds suspiciously like those fish fingers we used to eat at school dinners.
Edward, so true. When I had stopped guffawing about the need to DNA test for the presence of Tim the Tuna, the though of them eating a mixture of processed anchovy and sardines started me off again.
“Edward, so true. When I had stopped guffawing about the need to DNA test for the presence of Tim the Tuna, the though of them eating a mixture of processed anchovy and sardines started me off again.”
I must admit, it did amuse me and a good start to my day, no doubt!
apols, corrigendum – piscatorial [pescatarian?] is maybe the right word
I care because I like fish but don’t want to eat fish that could be endangered.
“EU officials are being ripped-off and their health put in danger …”
Hunh? Health put in danger? Were they being served fugu?
Are we sure they were really fish?
Dolphin, caught up in a tuna net, would be my guess.
Tokyo’s Tsukiji market
I almost went there once, but elected to stay at an all-night strip bar instead.
Salmon fraud appears to be a problem in the US.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2015/10/29/salmon-fraud-whats-wrong-with-americas-favorite-fish-especially-in-restaurants/
It’s fraud, and as such it’s clearly wrong. But on the cosmic scale of things it is not a terribly big deal. (We had a horse meat scandal a couple of years back. Once again clearly wrong, but as far as I can tell the number of people who suffered actual medical harm due to it was none whatsoever). It’s complicated with fish, too, as popular taxonomy of fish is, well, complicated. The same fish will usually have many different common names in many different places, and the same common name will often apply to many different species of fish, in different places and sometimes in the same place.
I almost went there once, but elected to stay at an all-night strip bar instead.
I went to the fish market. Read into that whatever you choose to.
“Who in buggery cares?”
Obviously you do, Worstall.
“EU officials are being ripped-off”
No, they’re being ripped off. They are ripped-off EU officials. Geez, you’d almost think you have to actively fail ‘O’-level English to be allowed a job in journalism these days.
@TN – address* please! Heading to Tokyo in a fortnight… (I’ve been to Tsukiji incidentally, know where that is)
Hope the eurocrats have been eating Vietnamese cheap’n’nasty fish.
*vague directions will do…
I think you will find that there are a number of regulations already pertaining to stairs.
Place I worked a number of years ago put in a mezzanine and the welder came to see me as I was ‘a numbers guy’ to help figure out dimensions etc. based on the regulations (allowed angle being the key one). At least it meant I did get to use basic trig outside of school.
In fact, they were served 36 kinds of fish – including four that could not be identified by laboratory analysis.
The restaurants are obviously used to really stupid customers then. Who don’t know anything about fish. Because the sensible policy is market segmentation. You charge much higher prices for rare fish. Sure, everyone has eaten sea bass. They know what it is and whether they like it. But some of them will pay £10 more to eat the rare Patagonian tooth fish if offered the choice.
As for the fish, did anyone else think of the preface to Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago?
“In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream – and in it found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.”
Maybe the restaurants are all run by Putin’s KGB mates on the look out for secret intelligence?