Warning: Please don’t eat bluefin tuna (unless you really want to)

tuna

A high class Japanese restaurant in the U.K. has been facing pressure from environmentalists about serving bluefin tuna, so it has placed a warning on its menu:

Under the asterisk it is stated, “Bluefin tuna is an environmentally threatened species please ask your server for an alternative.”

The asterisk appears on several sushi and sashimi (raw fish) dishes at Nobu’s restaurant in Berkeley Street, Mayfair.

However, although the warning appears on the menu at its other London restaurant, no asterisk appears against any of the fish dishes. The warning has only been put on the menus of the London restaurants, but crucially the bluefin can still be served if the customer wants.

Last year, a Greenpeace investigation had found that Nobu restaurants had been lying about not serving northern bluefin tuna. The IUCN Red list lists the species as “Data Deficient”, but environmentalist groups claim that the species is in fact “critically endangered.”

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11 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - May 30, 2009 at 9:08 am

Categories: Japanese Food Tags:

Marco Polo

This is plain bullying by the environmental group. WWF have a right to express their views, but do they have a right to make demands of a commercial business? This is gang warfare: the gang with the loudest mouth or the biggest fists gets its way.
If the bluefin tuna is truly “environmentally threatened”, i.e. decreasing in numbers, then that would presumably be reflected in the price in the restaurants. Tuna is a resource, like oil.

chase

Just like oil, you can’t accurate measure certain species of fish. But there is more proof of the depleting of tuna. Also, the fact that with every new harvest, the size of the biggest fishes are decreasing, not being able to mature as they were allowed previously. And no resource is infinite..

helical

The catches decreasing can only have one logical conclusion … the fishes are getting smarter!
We’re dooming ourselves to a rule under an iron … uh, fins by our superintelligent aquatic overlords by weeding out the dumb ones that get caught in our nets.
Quick, dismantle the seafood industry before the fishes grow any more cunning! They already hold 70% of Earth … we can’t hope to ever win if they turn on us!

DC

Spot on! Commerce is the only thing that’s important in life, and environmental groups should shut the fcuk up and let businesses make wads of cash by exterminating endangered species.

helical

Congratulations DC, you have demonstrated that you are incapable of comprehending the arguments of others or making any rational arguments yourself.

Macro Polo makes two arguments.

Premises:
1) The market prices determined by the principle of Supply and Demand are accurate reflections of the actual supply available, and/or market demand.
2) The prices of tuna have not risen.
Conclusion: there is no change in the amount of tuna available, and therefore is not endangered.

Premises:
1) Obstruction of businesses without proper reason is unjust.
2) Environmental activist groups are making demands on restaurants to ban tuna from their menu, which is detrimental to business.
3) The claim that tuna is being endangered is false.
Conclusion: Environmentalists making demands to restaurants regarding removing tuna from the menu lacks proper reason and is unjust.

Whether I agree with those premises and conclusions are a different matter, but if you want to start convincing others of your positions, it would do well to actually argue instead of making wild accusations.

DC

Inferring the sustainability of a species from its price in a restaurant doesn’t strike me as a robust argumentative strategy.

As for ‘wild accusations’ – I wasn’t accusing anybody of anything. I was parodying Marco Polo’s apparent claim that business trumps conservation.

Anyway, this Economist article makes interesting reading. However, it’s obviously all codswallop on the very sound scientific grounds that some restaurants haven’t put their prices up.

http://www.economist.com/background/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12502783
helical

Sorry that I came off as harsh, but it seemed that Marco Polo was making the argument that they are not environmentally threatened to begin with.
I do see it may not be the best of arguments to base the tuna number estimates on restaurant prices (without any sources either), but accusing his position of representing environmentally ignorant and selfish capitalism and nothing else just seemed like a typical knee-jerk environmentalist reaction that would undermine any valid conservationalist arguments.
shin

I’m in no way an environmentalist, but I’d like to point out that the free market doesn’t work with the fishing industry.

As the ocean isn’t owned by anyone, fisherman will race to the seas and catch as many fish as they can to make as much money as they can.
They have no incentive of “investing” in the ocean/ making sure that there are enough fish left in the end; as some other fisherman will simply catch the fish, which is open to be caught by anyone, instead.

You can compare it with a bank account which is accessible to anyone:
If it were only accessible to you, you’d only take out that, which you gained as interest for that year, and thereby you keep a base capital of money which is always available to you.
If it was accessible to anyone, everyone would take out as much as they could, and therefore depleting the account.

Fish prices going up will only encourage the fishers to fish more of that kind.

So the only way to make sure fish don’t die out is by setting quotas via government regulations.

On the other hand, Greenpeace should be complaining to the governments, asking for these quotas to be set; instead of going after the last people in the supply chain, the restaurants.

ダビ

So maybe Greenpeace should spend their money and effort making sure the necessary data is collected. If it turns out the species is endangered THEN they can bully restaurants all they want.
http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

The IUCN Red list lists the species as “Data Deficient”

Surely the obvious solution is for Japan to invest in some research tuna-ing?
Richard

Some observations:

1. Why the enemy of environmentalism is capitalism I’ll never understand. Which do you think had a better environment; West Germany or East Germany? North Korea or South Korea? Many of the world’s worst environmental disasters were created by government agencies in Socialist and Communist countries (Chernobyl, China’s Great Sparrow Campaign). The world’s most environmentally conscious and clean countries tend to be more free market.

2. The bluefin tuna that is in Nobu’s kitchen is no longer endangered. It is dead. So eat it up and don’t put in any further orders for more if you’re so concerned about that species.

3. When you’re at Nobu, don’t bother with the bluefin anyway. Get the black cod. You’ll thank me later.

Warning: Please don’t eat bluefin tuna (unless you really want to)

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