Cover Story
Sashimi Racket Could Wreck Export Business
Calls to ban carbon monoxide gas process
Counterfeit quality sashimi is creeping into the Pacific Islands tuna trade as a fiddle that could wreck efforts to export the real stuff.
At least one Fiji meat packing company is reported to be preparing to treat low-grade tuna and other fish with a controversial carbon monoxide gas process that gives it the appearance of top quality.
Sale of such treated fish is now banned in Japan, the United States Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand.
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In the United States, a consumers organisation has a class action suit underway, in which it is accusing producers of carbon monoxide gas treated fish of fraud and false labelling. It says buyers are now not getting what they think they are paying for.
Some Fiji fishing companies are pressing the government to ban the use of the process locally so, as one put it, to protect "Fiji¹s reputation as a producer of high quality tuna products for the international market."
The gas - the same as that belched from car and lorry exhausts - turn low grade brown tuna flesh bright pink. Most tuna is sold as canned tuna for US$2-US$3 a pound. High value tuna is naturally red and blocks of saku, the form in which frozen fish is cut, prepared and packaged for cutting into sashimi, fetch prices of up to US$100 a pound. Class A saku is bright translucent red.
The gas process is applied to albacore, skipjack, yellowfin, bigeye and bluefin tuna, swordfish and other species.
It began to be used in Indonesia and the Philippines, and later spread to Japan and the United States.
