Fish- what are we buying in the supermarket?

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Fish- what are we buying in the supermarket?
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Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Wed Aug 24, 05 6:26 pm Post subject:

Judith wrote:

Only the finings!

A very pleasant organic beer made by Shepherd Neame, I believe.

A good Kentish brewer. Majestic often stock it and you can buy a a box of 12 for ï¿½1.25 a bottle or two boxes for ï¿½1.12 a bottle from https://www.majestic.co.uk/ with free local delivery. Sorry for the plug but I quite like them and it means we don't often buy wine and beer from the supermarkets any more.

When there used to be a good wine offer on at a supermarket I've been known to only go in for wine. Always been tempted to have a single jar of baby food to go with the large amount of bottles and then say to the checkout person I cannot afford the jar.

Back to the fish, our local fish monger closed down and I had a mild up set stomach from eating fish from one supermarket. I only buy the odd item from Waitrose now (organic farmed trout that's labelled) but I'd like to buy (or catch) far more.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46239
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Aug 24, 05 7:58 pm Post subject:
i dont buy fish cos i catch trout etc , most shop fish is rather old and / or well travelled . i do eat lots of fish , even though i live in town i can walk to the river in 5 mins , maybe im lucky but rivers are much cleaner than they were , canals are often overstocked , and the environment agency do chase polluters so plenty fish . treat such matters with proper respect .yum yum yum.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 10:45 am Post subject:
I'd like to buy fish direct, as we don't have much at the moment. This unlikely to happen unless we move a bit closer to the coast though. I think welsh hook do some fish, don't they? Isn't it the case that frozen fish is better? cos its frozen at sea, when you defrost it, its 'fresher' (ie has spent less time hanging around un-frozen) that fresh fish?

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28238
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 10:53 am Post subject:
I think freezing fish loses something But we do generally get our fish from James The Fish of Pershore who do a mail order catalogue. They may deliver your way.

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 10:58 am Post subject:

Farmed fish has the major drawback of being very bad for the environment, the amount of crap these fish excrete just blankets the seabed. Plus they are fed a lot of articifical crap.

For example wild salmon are a lovely pink colour from eating crustaceans, farmed salmon get it from a feed additive otherwise you would be eating grey mush rather than pink mush. It's mush because they don't get a change to exercise.

If you want to by fish from the supermarket then I would go for tinned sardines or pilchards.

Next time I go fishing I'll get a mackerel from the supermarket and post a picture of them side by side.

twoscoops

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1924
Location: Warwickshire

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 11:03 am Post subject:
If you can bear it you could do a taste test as well. Somebody once gave me some mackerel caught the same day. They were delicious, and I pickled the surplus. However, I didn't have enough for the pickling recipe I had so had to buy some supermarket fish to make it up. Even after a week in the jar the supermarket mackerel were flaccid and tasteless.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45674
Location: Essex

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 11:10 am Post subject:

wellington womble wrote:

I think welsh hook do some fish, don't they?

Not as far as I know

RoryD

Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Posts: 692
Location: West Yorkshire

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 1:51 pm Post subject:
We bought bags of baby squid from the chinese wholesaler, because it was cheap, and we were trying to replace the chicken in our stir fries. On reflection, its probably drag netted in an enormously unsustainable way with little care for anything else in the sea. Unless anyone is aware of baby squid farms anywhere?

bernie-woman

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7824
Location: shropshire

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 2:10 pm Post subject:

I stopped buying fish from the supermarket when I asked how their smoked mackerel was caught I was told by the man behind tthe fish counter "Now, you don't want to be worrying your head about that now do you!"

I am rarely speechless but could not think of anything to say so walked out of said supermarket. We used to use a company called fish in a jiffy based in St Ives for internet orders but they seem to have gone belly up

I have been recommended martins seafresh as a possible replacement
https://www.martins-seafresh.co.uk/shopping/default.htm?affid=49346&affid=49346

also The Fish Society
https://www.thefishsociety.co.uk/cgi-local/index.cgi

Anyone used these

footprints

Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 234
Location: North Wales

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 6:17 pm Post subject: Re: Fish- what are we buying in the supermarket?

ross wrote:

Thanks to the Supermarket Secrets TV programme, I now only buy free range organic meat, preferably local as well. Now...what exactly am I getting when I buy fish in the supermarket? Does anyone know which fish tend to be farmed, which are caught in open waters and what conditions fish are subjected to? I know some people might argue that fish don't suffer pain and stress in the same way as mammals and birds, but I would rather assume they do unless it can be proved otherwise.
thanks
ross.

20 years ago I had shares in a boat with my Father.
I ate a lot of fish, (well you do don't you) .
When I browse the fish stall in tescos (fish they may have defrosted?) it doesn't smell like anything I ever ate.

I once, in a moment of weakness bought herrings from tescos. Too late to eat them that night after shopping, so they went into the chilly part of the fridge. Next day they were rotten.

Everybody with a thing for fish should know what it tastes like when its just stopped wriggling.

Ask Jonnyboy if tescos sell fresh fish?

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 6:43 pm Post subject: Re: Fish- what are we buying in the supermarket?

footprints wrote:

Everybody with a thing for fish should know what it tastes like when its just stopped wriggling.

Ask Jonnyboy if tescos sell fresh fish?

Nope. The only thing remotely fresh are the live mussels.

Next time anyone see's langoustines on display in a supermarket, pick one up, turn it over and sniff it. You'll get a strange look but you can tell the clueless fishmonger that the nasty ammonia smell is because they are old and decomposing.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 7:51 pm Post subject:

I really don't think its as simple as "caught wild = good and farmed = bad".

There's wild fisheries that are not sustainable. Others (like most trawling operations) are frightfully damaging to the environment, (trawling really mucks up the seabed). And some netting operations have significant "colateral damage" to other wildlife - I'm thinking particularly of albatrosses and dolphins.
On the other hand, AFAIK, there's very little harm in Mussel farming, for instance.

Are there any significant quantities of Cod, Halibut and Turbot being farmed as yet? I thought it was at the stage of showing that such things were possible...

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 9:02 pm Post subject:
Quite right Dougal, but there is very little farmed = good to be had, yet quite a lot of Wild = Good to be had if people are able to make informed choices.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 10:41 pm Post subject:

dougal wrote:

... Are there any significant quantities of Cod, Halibut and Turbot being farmed as yet? I thought it was at the stage of showing that such things were possible...

To answer my own question, I found a Guardian article 10/02, in which the hope was expressed that farmed Cod might, within 10 years, approach 10% of the UK market.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/fish/story/0,7369,805573,00.html
An article at about the same time noted the startup of the first Halibut farm in the Shetlands, with the hope of delivering the first commercial fish in 3 or 4 years - now?

I'm well aware of the problems of salmon farming, sea lice control, interferences with stressed wild populations, etc. But I'm hard pressed to remember any similar criticism of shellfish farming...? Are there similar problems, or even equivalent ones, with, for example, sea bass?

On this US website https://www.thefishlist.org/thelist.shtml there's quite a lot of farmed stuff on the 'good' side...

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 05 11:09 pm Post subject:

dougal wrote:

I really don't think its as simple as "caught wild = good and farmed = bad".

Jonnyboy wrote:

Quite right Dougal, but there is very little farmed = good to be had, yet quite a lot of Wild = Good to be had if people are able to make informed choices.

I suppose what I was trying to get at is that one does need to be informed - you can't make simple generalisations, even that farmed = bad. Indeed for 'proper' shellfish (molluscs? - mussels, clams, scallops, oysters...) farmed seems to be generally preferable on environmental and sustainability grounds.

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