wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  The Electric New Paper 27 Jun 07
Raw horse, deer meat for sushi?
Jap chefs look for options as tuna supplies run low

Straits Times 27 Jun 07
Tuna shortage sets off national panic in Japan
Supply crunch and rising prices drive sushi chefs to look for alternatives

TOKYO - SUSHI made with deer meat, anyone? How about a slice of raw horse on that rice?

These are some of the most extreme alternatives being considered by Japanese chefs as shortages of tuna threaten to remove it from Japan's sushi menus. From maguro to otoro, the Japanese seem to have almost as many words for tuna and its edible parts as the French have names for cheese.

So when global fishing bodies recently began lowering the limits on catches in the world's rapidly depleting tuna fisheries, Japan fell into a national panic.

Nightly news programmes ran reports of how higher prices were driving top-grade tuna off supermarket shelves and the conveyer belts at sushi chain stores. At nicer restaurants, sushi chefs began experimenting with substitutes, from cheaper varieties of fish to terrestrial alternatives.

'It's like America running out of steak,' said Mr Tadashi Yamagata, vice- chairman of Japan's national union of sushi chefs. 'Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi.'

The problem is the growing appetite for sushi and sashimi outside Japan, not only in the United States but also in newly wealthy countries like Russia, South Korea and China.

Fishing experts say that the shortages and rising prices will become more severe as the population of bluefin tuna - the big, slow-maturing type most favoured in sushi - fails to keep up with worldwide demand.

Fukuzushi, a mid-price restaurant in a residential neighbourhood in Tokyo, is having a tougher time finding high-quality fish at reasonable prices.

The restaurant's owner, Mr Shigekazu Ozoe, 56, says the current situation reminds him of the last time he had no tuna to sell - in 1973, during a scare over mercury poisoning in oceans, when customers refused to buy it.

At that time, he tried to find other red-coloured substitutes like smoked deer meat and raw horse, a local delicacy in some parts of Japan. 'We tasted it, and horse sushi was pretty good,' he recalled. 'It was soft, easy to bite off, had no smell.'

Mr Yamagata, 59, has been experimenting with more creative tuna alternatives at Miyakozushi, a restaurant that has been in his family for four generations.

He says his most successful substitutes were ideas he 'reverse imported' from the US, like smoked duck with mayonnaise and crushed daikon with sea urchin. He now makes annual visits to sushi restaurants in New York and Washington for inspiration.

'We can learn from American sushi chefs,' he said. 'Sushi has to evolve to keep up with the times.'

NEW YORK TIMES

The Electric New Paper 27 Jun 07
Raw horse, deer meat for sushi?
Jap chefs look for options as tuna supplies run low

FANCY a slice of raw horse? What about a sliver of fresh pink venison, better known as deer meat? The unthinkable might soon be happening in Japan.

Tuna, the mainstay of every sushi menu, is running out, reported the International Herald Tribune. And Japanese chefs are considering alternatives - duck sushi and even, gasp, raw horse and deer.

The shortage of tuna in Japanese markets is due to the bigger global issue of overfishing. European fishing fleets are preying on the Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the three bluefin species which command the highest prices in Japan.

More of this depleting stock of fish is heading away from Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market and into the supermarkets and restaurants of other nations like Russia, China and the US.

Some culinary enthusiasts believe this is a sign of deeper economic anxieties in Japan.

'Fish that would have gone to Tokyo are now ending up in New York or Shanghai,' said Mr Sasha Issenberg, author of The Sushi Economy. 'This has been devastating to Japan's national esteem.'

Japan now consumes about 60,000 tonnes a year of the three bluefin species, more than three quarters of the global annual catch.

Bluefin tuna is a highly-migratory warm-blooded fish that can grow up to nearly a tonne. A single fish can bring in tens of thousands of dollars. Prices have gone up more than a third, to 3,470 yen ($43) per kilogram for frozen northern and Pacific tuna. Otoro, the prized fatty belly flesh, goes for even more, up to $676 per kilogram.

These rising prices won't be going away soon, as bluefin tuna populations fail to keep up with worldwide demand. Last year, Atlantic nations responded by agreeing for the first time to reduce annual tuna catches in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea by 20 per cent.

SUSPEND TUNA FISHING

Tuna experts like Mr Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, a non-profit conservation group, are calling for even more drastic measures, namely, an Atlantic-wide five-year suspension on bluefin tuna fishing. This might not even be enough, as US and European officials bicker over fishing quotas.

In the meantime, some Japanese restaurants are feeling the pinch. Mr Shigekazu Ozoe, 56, owner of Fukuzushi, a mid-level restaurant in a residential neighbourhood in Tokyo, says that this reminds him of the last time he ran out of tuna - during a mercury poisoning scare in 1973. Then, he tried alternatives like smoked venison and raw horse, a local delicacy in some parts of Japan.

The only drawback then was the creepiness factor. He said: 'One customer said 'You have something four-legged in your fish case? That's eerie!' '

Other chefs like Mr Tadashi Yamagata, vice chairman of Japan's national union of sushi chefs, have been experimenting with more creative tuna alternatives such as smoked duck with mayonnaise and crushed daikon with uni (sea urchin).

But this might not be good enough for the sushi-mad Japanese. 'It's like America running out of steak,' said Mr Yamagata, 'Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi.'
links
Related articles on Global issues: marine issues
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com