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Salmon at Prices too Good to be True a Serious Health Risk

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Wealthy Chinese diners have developed a taste for raw salmon and wasabi, but concerns over the former’s true safety have recently risen.

Over the past decade, not only has China embraced Japanese cuisine, but the country’s conversion to a salmon-rich diet has more than pleased organisations such as the Norwegian Seafood Council, whose marketing department has succeeded in bringing the fish to Chinese tables.

It is strikingly apparent that Japanese cuisine is a solid favourite in Nanjing. There is a Japanese restaurant easily accessible in every neighbourhood, and on every corner, and they are all serving up “fresh” raw salmon.

Famously expensive the world over, it comes as a surprise that so many restaurants in China can serve up such vast quantities of salmon at rather affordable prices. For ¥199, Nanjing’s famous DaYu Tepponyaki chain will serve you as much of the raw fish as your heart desires…or your stomach can take. Recent discourse on Chinese social media is pouring over not only the authenticity of the fish in China, but its health concerns too.

Rumour has it that Chinese restaurants are selling Rainbow Trout as Salmon. This may not seem like a problem as the two fish look and taste the same and are indeed both a part of the salmonid family; the problem lies with the parasites. Salmon may be frozen, thawed and if carefully prepared (and while there may still be a risk for some people), can be eaten raw; Rainbow Trout on the other hand, must not be eaten raw after it has been frozen.

At the beginning of April 2018, a salmon smuggling crackdown in China forced prices to skyrocket, which some speculate was the cause of an influx of lucrative farming efforts that have popped up around the country. The Hearty Soul notes that more than 40 percent of the world’s “wild” salmon is actually farmed and over 80 percent of farmed salmon comes from China.

Writing for Seafood News, Mark Godfrey notes, “In 2012, Shandong Oriental Ocean imported 200,000 salmon fish fries [fry] from Norway and partnered with the Ocean Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science in a breeding program centred on Dajijia, a town near Yantai… The lucrative margins in salmon have long intrigued Chinese fisheries companies. [And] China has adequate cool-water resources in the Yellow Sea”.

The Seafood News article goes on to say that, “According to Dong Shuanglin, a professor at the Ocean University in Qingdao, a leading centre for Chinese aquaculture research. “There are 130,000 square kilometres of sea with temperatures suitable to raising salmon… If we use only one percent of that surface area for salmon breeding, we will have a huge resource”.

Health concerns originating from eating raw fish that has been farmed, rather than fished from the wild, lies in the overpopulation of farms, allowing for accelerated growth and spread of parasites and diseases. The stronger demands become for the Japanese delicacy in China, so the more unscrupulous means people will take in order to deliver will continue.

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